UN!'
I
BINDING LISrJUL 1 5 1924
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE
BY J. C. STOBART, M.A.
SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS
" Mr. Stohart does a real service when he gives the reading but
non-expert public this fine volume, embodying the latest results of
research, blending them, too, into as agreeable a narrative as we
have met with for a long while. . . . There is not a dull line in his
book. He has plenty of humour, as a writer needs must have who
is to deal with men from the human standpoint. . . . It is beautifully
produced, and the plates, both in colour and monochrome, are as
numerous and well-chosen as they are striking and instructive." —
THE GUARDIAN.
" Mr. Stobart has produced the very book to show the modern
barbarian the meaning of Hellenism. He exhibits the latest dis-
coveries from Cnossus and elsewhere, the new-found masterpieces
along with the old. He criticises and appraises the newest theories,
ranging from the influence of malaria to the origins of drama. He
has something for everybody. . . . The book is nobly illustrated . . .
no such collection of beautiful things of this kind has yet been placed
before the English public." — THE SATURDAY REVIEW.
" He really helps to make ancient Greece a living reality ; and the
illustrations, a conspicuous feature of the book, are good and well
selected, the photographic views gaining much from the reproduc-
tion on a dull-surfaced paper." — TIMES.
" A more beautiful book than this has rarely been printed. . . .
The pictures of Greek scenery, sculpture, vases, etc., are exceptionally
good." — EVENING STANDARD.
" No better guide through the labyrinth of things Hellenic has
appeared in our day, and both brush and camera yield of their
choicest to make the book an enduring joy."- — DAILY CHRONICLE.
" A vivid picture of a wonderful civilisation which should fire many
to further studies." — SHEFFIELD DAILY TELEGRAPH.
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
, 'lilt/11.
, '
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS
ROME
A Survey of Roman Culture
and Civilisation : by
J. C. Stobart, M.A.
LATE LECTURER IN HISTORY
LONDON
SIDGWICK flf JACKSON LTD.
3 Adam Street, Adelphi
1912
All rights reserved
DC,
11
PRINTED BY
BALLANTYNE & COMPANY LTD
AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
TAVISTOCK STREET COTENT GAKDKN
LONDON
PREFACE
THIS book is a continuation of "The Glory that was Greece,"
written with the same purpose and from the same point of
view.
The point of view is that of humanity and the progress of
civilisation. The value of Rome's contribution to the lasting
welfare of mankind is the test of what is to be emphasised or
neglected. Hence the instructed reader will find a deliberate
attempt to adjust the historical balance which has, I venture to
think, been unfairly deflected by excessive deference to literary
and scholastic traditions. The Roman histories of the nine-
teenth century were wont to stop short with the Republic,
because " Classical Latin " ceased with Cicero and Ovid. They
followed Livy and Tacitus in regarding the Republic as the
hey-day of Roman greatness, and the Empire as merely a dis-
tressing sequel beginning and ending in tragedy. From the
standpoint of civilisation this is an absurdity. The Republic
was a mere preface. The Republic until its last century did
nothing for the world, except to win battles whereby the road
was opened for the subsequent advance of civilisation. Even
the stern tenacity of the Roman defence against Hannibal,
admirable as it was, can only be called superior to the still
more heroic defence of Jerusalem by the Jews, because the
former was successful and the latter failed. From the Republican
standpoint Rome is immeasurably inferior to Athens. In
short, what seemed important and glorious to Livy will not
necessarily remain so after the lapse of nearly two thousand
years. Rome is so vast a fact, and of consequences so far-
reaching, that every generation may claim a share in interpreting
vii
PREFACE
her anew. There is the Rome of the ecclesiastic, of the
diplomat, of the politician, of the soldier, of the economist.
There is the Rome of the literary scholar, and the Rome of
the archaeologist.
It is wonderful how this mighty and eternal city varies
with her various historians. Diodorus of Sicily, to whom we
owe most of her early history, was seeking mainly to flatter
the claims of the Romans to a heroic past. Polybius, the
trained Greek politician of the second century B.C., was writing
Roman history in order to prove to his fellow-Greeks his
theory of the basis of political success. Livy was seeking
a solace for the miseries of his own day in contemplating the
virtues of an idealised past. Tacitus, during an interval of
mitigated despotism, strove to exhibit the crimes and follies of
autocracy. These were both rhetoricians, trained in the
school of Greek democratic oratory. Edward Gibbon, too
(I write as one who cannot change trains at Lausanne without
emotion), saw the Empire from the standpoint of eighteenth-
century liberalism and materialism. Theodor Mommsen made
Rome the setting for his Bismarckian Caesarism, and finally,
M. Boissier has enlivened her by peopling her streets with
Parisians. It is, in fact, difficult to depict so huge a landscape
without taking and revealing an individual point of view.
There is always something fresh to see even in the much-
thumbed records of Rome.
Although a large part of this book is written directly from
the original sources, and none of it without frequent reference
to them, it is, in the main, frankly a derivative history intended
for readers who are not specialists. Except Pelham's Outlines,
which are almost exclusively political, there is no other book
in English, so far as I am aware, which attempts to give a
view of the whole course of ancient Roman History within
the limits of a single volume, and yet the Empire without the
Republic is almost as incomplete as the Republic without the
Empire. As for the Empire, although nothing can supersede
or attempt to replace The Decline and Fall, yet the scholar's
viii
PREFACE
outlook on the history of the Empire has been greatly changed
since Gibbon's day by the discovery of Pompeii and the study
of inscriptions. Therefore while I fully admit my obligations
to Gibbon and Mommsen (as well as to Dill, Pelham, Bury,
Haverfield, Greenidge, Warde Fowler, Cruttwell, Sellar,
Walters, Rice Holmes, and Mrs. Strong, and to Ferrero, Pais,
Boissier, Seeck, Bernheim, Mau, Becker, and Friedlander) this
book professes to be something more than a compilation,
because it has a point of view of its own.
The pictures are an integral part of my scheme. It is not
possible with Rome, as it was with Greece, to let pictures and
statues take the place of wars and treaties. Wars and treaties
are an essential part of the Grandeur of Rome. They should
have a larger place here, were they less well known, and were
there less need to redress a balance. But the pictures are
chosen so that the reader's eye may be able to gather its own
impression of the Roman genius. When the Roman took pen
in hand he was usually more than half a Greek, but sometimes
in his handling of bricks and mortar he revealed himself. For
this reason — and because I must confess not to be a convinced
admirer of "Roman Art" — there is an attempt to make the
illustrations convey an impression of grand building, vast, solid,
and utilitarian, rather than of finished sculpture by Greek
hands. Pictures can produce this impression far more power-
fully than words. Standing in the Colosseum or before the
solid masonry of the Porta Nigra at Trier, one has seemed to
come far closer to the heart of the essential Roman than ever
in reading Vergil or Horace. The best Roman portraits are
strangely illuminating.
I have to acknowledge with gratitude the permission given
me by the Director of the Koniglichen Messbildanstalt of the
Royal Museum at Berlin to reproduce four of the magnificent
photographs of Dr. O. Puchstein's discoveries at Ba'albek. I
am indebted also to Herr Georg Reimer, of Berlin, for allowing
me to reproduce four of the complete series of Reliefs from
Trajan's Column published by him in heliogravure under the
ix
PREFACE
care of Professor Cichorius. The coloured plate of the interior
of the House of Livia is reproduced by permission of the
German Archaeological Institute from Luckenbach's Kunst
und Geschichte (grosse Ausgabe, erster Teil); and from the
same work I have been allowed to reproduce the reconstruc-
tion of the Roman Forum in the time of Caesar. Professor
Garstang has kindly supplied a photograph, with permission to
reproduce of the bronze head of Augustus discovered by him at
Meroe and recently presented to the British Museum. The
Cambridge University Press has allowed me to give two
pictures from Prof. Ridgeway's Early Age of Greece ; and the
photograph of the Alcantara Bridge was kindly supplied by Sr.
D. Miguel Utrillo, of Barcelona. The majority of photographs
have been supplied by Messrs. W. A. Mansell and Co. ; but
for many subjects, especially of Roman remains outside Italy,
I must acknowledge my indebtedness to a number of amateur
photographers, who not only avoid the hackneyed point of view
but also achieve a high level of technique. Sir Alexander
Binnie has kindly permitted the inclusion of eight photographs
and Mr. C. T. Carr of four ; while I must also make acknow-
ledgment to Miss Carr, Mr. R. C. Smith, and Miss K. P. Blair.
As before, I am much indebted to Mr. Arnold Gomme for
his assistance with the proofs.
J. C. S.
CANTERBURY, 1912
CONTENTS
TAGS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii
INTRODUCTION
THE PERSPECTIVE OF ROMAN HISTORY :
LATINISM : ITALY AND THE ROMAN I
CHAP.
I. THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
THE GROWING REPUBLIC : THE CONSTITU-
TION : THE EARLY ROMAN : EARLY RE-
LIGION : LAW 16
II. CONQUEST
THE PROVINCES : THE IMPERIAL CITY 44
III. THE LAST CENTURY OF THE
REPUBLIC
THE GRACCHI : MARIUS : SULLA : POMPEIUS
AND CAESAR : LATE REPUBLICAN CIVILI-
SATION 82
IV. AUGUSTUS
THE SENATE : THE PEOPLE AND THE MAGIS-
TRATES : ARMY AND TREASURY : THE
PROVINCES 160
V. AUGUSTAN ROME
REFORMATION OF ROMAN SOCIETY : AUGUSTAN
LITERATURE : ART : ARCHITECTURE 223
VI. THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
THE PRINCIPATE : IMPERIAL ROME : EDUCA-
TION AND LITERATURE : ART : LAW :
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 253
EPILOGUE 305
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY 317
BIBLIOGRAPHY 325
INDEX 329
xi
NOTE
The cameo on the front cover of this volume is from a
sardonyx head of Germanicus in the Carlisle collection.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES
HEAD OF AUGUSTUS WITH CROWN OF OAK-LEAVES Frontispiece
Engraved by Emery Walker from a photograph by Bruckmann of the
original in the Glyptothek, Munich. An idealised portrait of the
emperor in middle life. He wears the corona civica. See p. 169
TO FACE
" CLYTIE " 248
Engraved by Emery Walker from a photograph by Mansell & Co. of the
original marble in the British Museum. An idealised portrait-bust of
a lady of the imperial family, possibly Antonia, the work of a Greek
artist of the Augustan Age. The name " Clytie " has no authority : the
frame of petals is purely decorative
MAP (IN COLOUR)
THE ROMAN EMPIRE AT ITS FULLEST EXTENT 194
p LATES
1 GENERAL VIEW OF ROMAN FORUM 4
From a photograph by Anderson. The view is taken from the Capitol,
looking S.E. at the Arch of Titus, on the left of which part of the
Colosseum is visible. The background on the right is filled by the
Palatine Hill and the substructures of Caligula's Palace, in front of which
the walls of the Temple of Augustus are visible. To the right of the
middle are three columns and part of the entablature of the Temple of
Castor. In the centre is the Column of Phocas. The foreground is
occupied by the Arch of Severus (1.) the Temple of Saturn (r.) and two
Corinthian columns of the Temple of Vespasian
2 THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA 6
From a photograph by Anderson. The ruined arches belonged to the
Aqueduct of Claudius. See p. 293
3 VIEW OF SPOLETO 8
From a photograph by Anderson. Modern view showing a typical
hill-town or arx. Spoletium is chiefly famous in ancient history for its
gallant repulse of Hannibal in 217 B.C.
xiii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE
PLATM PAGE
4 THE CAPITOLINE WOLF 18
From a photograph by Anderson of the original bronze in the Palace of
the Conservatori, Rome. The wolf herself is ancient, probably of
Etruscan workmanship. See p. 18
5 (Fig. i) ARCHAIC BRONZE : " PAN " zo
Primitive Etruscan work. A horned and bearded god
(Fig. 2) ARCHAIC BRONZE: "ARTEMIS"
From photographs by Mansell & Co. of the originals in the British
Museum, showing the development of Etruscan bronze-work
6 ETRUSCAN VASE 22
Drawn from Vase F. 488 in the Etruscan Room, British Museum. A
curiously debased design, which like much of Etruscan art suggests
unintelligent copying of Greek models
7 ETRUSCAN TOMB IN TERRA-COTTA 24
From a photograph by Mansell & Co. of the original in the Terra-cotta
Room, British Museum. The reader will notice the close resemblance
of this work, particularly the relief depicting the battle and the mourners,
to Greek relief -work of the sixth century B.C.
8 VIA APPIA : THE APPIAN WAY 40
From a photograph by Anderson. The remains of Roman tombs may be
seen on each side of the road
9 LAKE TRASIMENE 50
| From photographs by C. T. Carr. The scene of the famous battle of
217 B.C., in which Hannibal ambushed the Roman army on the shores
of the lake
10 BRONZE STATUE OF AULUS METILIUS [" THE ARRINGA-
TORE "] 56
From a photograph by Alinari of the original bronze statue in the
Archaeological Museum, Florence. One of the rare examples of early
republican portraiture, found near Lake Trasimene, a statue of Aulus
Metilius (unknown to history) in the guise of an orator. It is assigned
to the end of the third century B.C., and is said to represent the transition
between Etruscan and Roman portraiture. I think, however, that it
would be true to describe it as a Roman head, probably copied from a
death-mask, upon a Greek body. Where is the Etruscan element ?
11 PUBLIUS SCIPIO AFRICANUS 72
From a photograph by Brogi of the original bronze in the Naples
Museum. The authenticity of the portrait cannot be guaranteed, but
it is a fine example of Republican portraiture
12 (Fig. i) ETRUSCAN WARRIOR : BRONZE STATUETTE 88
Possibly imported from Greece
(Fig. 2) ROMAN LEGIONARY OF THE EMPIRE : BRONZE
STATUETTE
From photographs by Mansell & Co. of the originals in the British
Museum. These two bronze statuettes show the essential similarity of
Roman and Etruscan (or Greek) armour, which consists mainly of a
cuirass of leather plated with metal
xiv
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE
PLATES PAGE
13 SCABBARD OF LEGIONARY SWORD 98
From photographs of the original in the British Museum. The scabbard
is in the scale of I : 4. The sword was only 21 in. long and z£ in. at
the greatest breadth. It was found at Mainz. The scabbard is of wood
ornamented with plates of silver-gilt. At the top is a relief showing
Tiberius welcoming Germanicus on his victorious return from Germany
(A.D. 17). In the centre is a portrait medallion of Tiberius. The
relief at the bottom indicates the return of the standards of Varus to a
Roman temple. Below is an Amazon armed with the German battle-axe
14 CN. POMPEIUS MAGNUS 104
From a photograph by Tryde of the original marble in the Jacobsen
collection at Copenhagen. There is no sufficient reason to doubt the
authenticity of this famous portrait of Pompey the Great. It closely
resembles a beautiful gem in the Chatsworth collection
15 BUST OF CICERO 108
From a photograph by Alinari of the original in the Uffizi Gallery,
Florence. A fine ancient portrait ; but its authenticity cannot be
guaranteed
16 TEMPLE OF FORTUNA VIRILIS, ROME 112
From a photograph by Anderson. Erected in 78 B.C. Notice the
Ionic columns used purely as ornament
17 TEMPLE OF VESTA, TIVOLI 116
From a photograph by Alinari. Commonly known as " The Temple
of the Sibyl," but more properly assigned to Vesta. This is considered
to be work of about 80 B.C. The style is Corinthian
18 (Fig. i) VENUS GENETRIX 120
From a photograph by Alinari of the statue in the Louvre. Described
on p. 156
(Fig. 2) THE MEDICI VENUS
From a photograph by Alinari of the statue in the Uffizi Gallery,
Florence. This celebrated and once admired statue is now regarded as
typical of the degenerate Greek work produced for the Roman market.
The technique is still admirable
19 JULIUS CESAR 136
From a photograph by the Graphic Gesellschaft of the original black
basalt head in the Berlin Museum. Its antiquity is not above
suspicion
20 (Fig. i) BUST OF JULIUS CAESAR 138
From a photograph by Anderson of the original in the Vatican, Rome.
A fine portrait, undoubtedly a close copy of an authentic original, as is
the equally famous example in the British Museum
(Fig. 2) BUST OF BRUTUS
From a photograph by Anderson of the bust in the Capitoline Museum,
Rome. The authenticity of this has been doubted, but on insufficient
grounds. Evidently a work of about the same period as the " Young
Augustus " (plate 25)
XV
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE
POTTERY HO
Plate from " The Art of the Romans " by H. B. Walters, by kind
permission of Messrs. Methuen & Co. Arretine pottery takes its name
from Arretium (Arezzo), the chief centre of this native Italian industry.
It is distinguished by the fine crimson clay of which it is made. The
designs stamped in relief from moulds are generally imitated from
Greek metal-work or Samian ware. The pieces are seldom more than
6 in.' in^height
22 COIN PLATE (IN COLLOTYPE) 142
1. Coin of Pontus, with head of Mithradates the Great. See pp. 103,
158
2. Silver Tetradrachm, with heads of Antony and Cleopatra. See
pp. 122, 155
3. Denarius of Sulla
Rev . Q. Pompeius Rufus, consul with Sulla in 88 B.C.
4. Denarius of Julius Caesar
Rev. figure of Victory, with name of L. ./Emilius Buca, triumvir of
the mint
5. Coin of Tiberius, with head of Livia and inscription SALVS AVGVSTA
23 AUGUSTUS : THE BLACAS CAMEO 144
Collotype plate from a photograph by Mansell & Co. of the original in
the Gem Room, British Museum. Probably the work of Dioscorides,
who had the exclusive right of portraying Augustus
24 AUGUSTUS : THE " PRIMAPORTA " STATUE 148
From a photograph by Anderson of the statue in the Vatican, Rome.
The emperor is depicted as a triumphant general, haranguing his troops.
In the centre of the breastplate is a Parthian humbly surrendering the
standards to a Roman soldier
25 AUGUSTUS AS A YOUTH 150
From a photograph by Anderson of the bust in the Vatican, Rome. A
distinctly Greek portrait, possibly taken during his early days at
Apollonia ; an authentic original bust
26 AUGUSTUS : BRONZE HEAD, FROM MERGE 152
From a photograph supplied by Prof. Garstang of the original bronze,
discovered by him in 1910, at Meroe in Egypt, and since presented to
the British Museum
27 M. VIPSANIUS AGRIPPA 154
From a photograph by Alinari of the bust in the UfHzi Gallery,
Florence. The design of the bust is inconsistent with the belief that
this is a contemporary portrait. But it resembles the portraits of the
general on the coins
28 (Fig. i) ROMAN BRIDGE AT RIMINI 156
This fine marble bridge was begun by Augustus and completed by
Tiberius. Ariminum was the northern terminus of the great Flaminian
Road
(Fig. 2) ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE AT VERONA
From photographs by C. T. Carr. The amphitheatre was erected by
Diocletian about A.D. 290 and was restored by Napoleon. It would
xvi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE
PLATES T*GS
contain about 20,000 spectators. Verona was the capital under
Theodoric the Ostrogoth
29 TWO VIEWS OF THE PONT DU CARD 158
This is part of the great aqueduct which supplied Nismeswith water.
The bridge has a span of 880 feet across the valley of the Garden. The
lower tiers are built of stone without mortar or cement of any
kind
30 (Fig. i) INTERIOR OF ROMAN TEMPLE, NISMES 160
(Fig. 2) LOWER CORRIDOR OF ARENA, NISMES
The amphitheatre at Nismes is larger than that of Verona. There are
sixty arches on the ground and first floors, with larger apertures at the
four cardinal points
31 THE ARENA, NISMES 162
Notice the consoles in the attic story. These are pierced with round
holes to contain the poles which once supported an awning for the
protection of the spectators from the heat
32 (Fig. i) TRIUMPHAL ARCH, ST. REMY, ARLES 164
Aries (Arelate) was one of the chief towns of Gallia Narbonensis, and a
colony of Augustus. The upper part of the arch has perished. The
sculptures represent chained captives. There is no inscription and
the date of the monument is uncertain
(Fig. 2) MAUSOLEUM OF JULIUS, ST. REMY, ARLES
This mausoleum was erected by three brothers Julius to the memory
of their parents. Thousands of Gauls took the name of Julius in honour
of Caesar and Augustus. The style, which is essentially Grzco-Roman,
is appropriate to the period of Augustus. The reliefs again represent
captives.
Plates 29-32 are from photographs taken by Sir Alexander Binnie
33 (Fig. i) ARCH OF MARIUS, ORANGE 166
From a photograph by Neurdein. Apparently erected to the memory
of C. Marius, who defeated the Teutons at Aquae Sextias in 102 B.C.
The neighbourhood of Orange (Arausio) was the scene of a great Roman
defeat three years earlier. But the style of the monument points to a
date at least a century later. The style of the reliefs is dated by the
best authorities in the reign of Tiberius. The name of the sculptor,
Boudillus, appears to be Gallic
(Fig. 2) S. LORENZO, MILAN
From a photograph by Brogi. Remains of a handsome Corinthian
colonnade which formerly belonged to the palace of Maximian. In the
fourth century A.D., Mediolanum was frequently a place of imperial
residence. In this period Milan was larger than Rome
34 BARBARIAN WOMAN, KNOWN AS " THUSNELDA " 168
From a photograph by Alinari. This famous statue, which stands in
the Loggia dei Lanzi, at Florence, is popularly called after the wife of
Arminius, who died in exile at Ravenna. It is probably a typical
Teutonic captive and very possibly occupied a place in the niche of a
triumphal arch. Mrs. Strong assigns it to the period of Trajan
b xvii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PHTES
35 (Fig. i) ALTAR OF THE LARES OF AUGUSTUS 172
From a photograph by Alinari of the original in the Uffizi Gallery,
Florence. Augustus introduced Caesar-worship into Rome by means of
these altars to the Lares (household gods) and the Genius of Augustus.
This altar dates from A.D. 2. Augustus is in the centre, Livia his wife to
the right, and Gaius or Lucius Caesar to the left. Mrs. Strong describes
these reliefs as " a series of singular charm "
(Fig. 2) SACRIFICIAL SCENE, FROM THE ARA PACIS
From a photograph by Anderson of the original in the Villa Medici,
Rome. An earlier example of the favourite sacrificial theme. The
artist has sacrificed, as usual, the hinder part of his victim to his desire
to introduce as many as possible of the portrait studies. The relief
has been much and badly restored
36 THE "TELLUS " GROUP, ARA PACIS 174
From a photograph by Brogi of the original in the Uffizi Gallery,
Florence. Discussed on pp. 244-245
37 RELIEF, ARA PACIS 176
From a photograph by Anderson of the original in the Museo delle
Terme, Rome. The scene is a sacrifice. The majestic bearded figure on
the right is perhaps emblematical of the senate — one of the finest con-
ceptions of Graeco-Roman art and little inferior to the elders on the
Parthenon frieze. Above the attendants on the left is a small shrine
of the Penates
38 SILVER PLATE FROM BOSCOREALE 178
1. A silver mirror-case of exquisite design : the central medallion
represents Leda and the swan
2. One of the beautiful examples of Augustan art in which natural
forms are used with brilliant decorative effect
From photographs by Giraudon of the originals in the Louvre
39 (Fig. i) GERMANICUS 180
Sardonyx cameo from the Carlisle collection. Photograph by
Mansell & Co.
(Fig. 2) GEM OF AUGUSTUS : CAMEO OF VIENNA
Photograph by Mansell & Co. Sardonyx cameo probably by Dioscorides,
A.D. 13
Below : German captives and Roman soldiers erecting a trophy
Above : Augustus and Roma enthroned. Behind them are Earth, Ocean,
and (f) the World, who is crowning him with the corona civica. Behind
his head is his lucky sign — the constellation of Capricornus. Tiberius
escorted by a Victory is stepping out of his triumphal chariot and
Germanicus stands between
40 AUGUSTUS AND FAMILY OF OESARS : CAMEO 182
From a photograph by Mansell & Co. of the original in the Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris. The largest and finest sardonyx cameo in existence.
It is cut in five layers of the stone so that wonderful effects of tinting
are produced, sometimes at the expense of the modelling. Tiberius and
his mother Livia occupy the centre. Germanicus and his mother
Antonia stand before him. The figures to the left may be Gaius
xviii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE
PtATES PAGE
(Caligula) and the wife of Germanicus. Behind the throne Drusus is
looking up to heaven, where the deified Augustus floats, surrounded by
allegorical figures. Below are barbarian captives
41 (Figs, i and 3) STUCCO RELIEFS 184
From photographs by Anderson of the originals in the National Museum,
Rome. Much of the ornamentation of Roman villas was in stucco or
terra-cotta taken from the mould and often tinted. Both the flying
Victory and the Bacchic relief showing a drunken Silenus are extremely
graceful specimens of the art, both essentially Greek
(Fig. 2) DECORATIVE ORNAMENT, ARA PACIS
From a photograph by Anderson of the fragment in the Museo delle
Terme, Rome. A fine example of the naturalistic ornament of the
Augustan period
42 (Fig. i) FRAGMENT OF AUGUSTAN ALTAR 188
From a photograph by Anderson of the original in the Museo delle
Terme, Rome. Quoted by Wickhoff as " a triumph of the Augustan
illusionist style " : a design of plane-leaves, admirable in fidelity to
nature. Observe the rich mouldings of the framework
(Fig. 2) ROMAN RELIEF
From a photograph by Mansell & Co. of the original in the British
Museum. From the tomb of a poet. The Muse stands before him
holding a tragic mask
43 ALTAR OF AMEMPTUS 190
From a photograph by Giraudon of the original in the Louvre. The
inscription shows that this altar was dedicated to the spirits of Amemptus,
afreedman of the Empress Livia. It belongs therefore to about A.D. 25.
From the types of ornament employed one may conjecture that
Amemptus was a Greek actor and musician. The decorative effect is
very charming and the detail most beautifully worked out
44 (Fig. i) THE TEMPLE OF SATURN, FORUM, ROME 192
Eight Ionic unfluted columns with part of the entablature. The
columns stand upon a lofty base. The Temple of Saturn, which con-
tained the treasury of the senate, was rebuilt in 42 B.C.
(Fig. 2) THE TEMPLE OF MATER MATUTA, ROME
From photographs by R. C. Smith. The most complete example of the
round temple still existing, the Temple of Vesta in the Forum having
disappeared. This is probably a temple of " Mother Dawn." The
five Corinthian columns of Pentelic marble were probably imported
from Greece. Most authorities assign it to the Augustan restoration,
but others place it among the earliest Republican works. The tiled .
roof is of course modern, and somewhat spoils its effect. This little
temple stood in the Forum Boarium (cattle market)
45 PORCH AND INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON, ROME 196
From photographs by Anderson and Brogi. See p. 251
46 MAISON CARREE, NISMES 198
From a photograph kindly supplied by Sir Alexander Binnie. Perhaps
the finest, certainly the most complete example of Grxco-Roman
architecture. The style is Corinthian, but characteristic Roman
xix
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE
PLATES PAGE
developments are the high podium or base, and the fact that the sur-
rounding peristyle is " engaged " or attached to the wall except in
front (pseudo-peripteral). This temple was dedicated to M. Aurelius
and L. Verus. It was surrounded by an open space and then a
Corinthian colonnade. Nismes, once the centre of a flourishing trade in
cheese, is especially rich in Roman remains
47 THEATRE OF MARCELLUS, ROME 200
From a photograph by Anderson. The theatre, built by Augustus in
13 B.C. in memory of his ill-fated nephew, was constructed in three
tiers, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. The upper story has disappeared,
and the elevation of the ground floor has been spoilt by the. rise in the
level of the ground
48 INNER COURT, FARNESE PALACE, ROME 202
From a photograph by Anderson. The splendid cortile of the Farnese
Palace, designed by Michael Angelo, is copied from the Theatre of
Marcellus, exhibiting the same succession of orders. The juxtaposition
of these two plates should assist the reader's imagination to re-create
the original splendours of Roman architecture from the existing
ruins
49 (Fig. i) COLONNADE OF OCTAVIA 204
From a photograph by Anderson. Erected by Augustus in honour of
his beloved sister, who was married first to M. Marcellus then to
M. Antony. She was the mother of Marcellus, great-grandmother of
Nero and Caligula. She died in 1 1 B.C. The colonnade was probably
built some years before her death. It enclosed the temples of Jupiter
Stator and Juno ; it also contained a public library and a senate-house
which was destroyed by fire in the reign of Titus
(Fig. 2) ROMAN BAS-RELIEF
From a photograph by Alinari of the original in the Uffizi Gallery,
Florence. A sacrifice, probably a work of the time of Domitian.
The heads, most of them portraits, are of admirable execution, but the
overcrowded design is unpleasing. The architectural background is
typical of the Flavian period. This slab was used by Raphael in his
cartoon of Paul and Barnabas at Lystra
30 COIN PLATE (IN COLLOTYPE) : ROMAN EMPERORS 206
*• Nero 5. Marcus Aurelius
2- Trajan 6. Domitian
3. Vespasian 7. Vitellius
4. Hadrian 8. Galba
From originals in the British Museum
51 HADRIAN'S WALL : NEAR HOUSESTEADS (BORCOVICIUM)
NORTHUMBERLAND ' 2jO
From a photograph by Gibson & Son. See pp. 261-262
52 PORTA NIGRA, TRIER, GERMANY 214
From a photograph by Frith. An example of military architecture,
truly Roman in character. Probably dates from the time of Gallienus
(A.D. 260)
XX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PACK
53 RELIEF FROM TRAJAN'S COLUMN— I 216
On the left, the emperor surrounded by his staff is haranguing his
troops. Observe how the ranks of the army are portrayed in file. On
the right, fortifications are being constructed (Cichorius, plate xi)
54 RELIEF FROM TRAJAN'S COLUMN— II 218
On the left, horses are being transported across the Danube ; Trajan is
seen steering his galley, sheltered by a canopy. On the right he is
landing at the gates of a Roman town on the river banks. The temples
are visible within the walls (Cichorius, plate xxvi)
55 RELIEF FROM TRAJAN'S COLUMN— III 220
A cavalry battle, in which the Romans are charging the mail-clad
Sarmatians. The reader will notice the resemblance between the
latter and the Norman knights of the Bayeux tapestry (Cichorius,
plate xxviii)
56 RELIEF FROM TRAJAN'S COLUMN— IV 222
On the left the Romans, in testudo formation, are attacking a Dacian
fortress. In the centre Trajan is receiving the heads of the defeated
enemy (Cichorius, plate li)
Four collotype plates, reproduced by special permission from Prof.
Cichorius's " Die Reliefs der Traianssaule " (Berlin, Georg Reimer,
1896). Photographs by Donald Macbeth
57 (Fig. i) RELIEF, FROM A SARCOPHAGUS 224
From a photograph by Alinari of the original in the Uffizi Gallery,
Florence. An example of " continuous narration " in relief-work.
The sarcophagus is ornamented with typical scenes in the life of a
Roman gentleman — the chase, the greeting by his slaves, sacrifice,
marriage. The design is described as " subtly interwoven " or
" fatiguing and confused " according to the taste of the onlooker
(Fig. 2) ROMAN AND DACIAN
From a photograph by G;raudon of the original relief in the Louvre.
The source of this slab is unknown ; it evidently belongs to the begin-
ning of the second century A.D., and refers to the Dacian Wars of
Trajan, or possibly of Domitian. The contrast between the proud
calm Roman and the wild barbarian is very fine, and recalls similar
contrasts in Greek sculpture. In the background a Dacian hut and an
oak-tree are seen
58 RELIEF FROM THE ARCH OF TITUS 226
From a photograph by Brogi. Shows the emblems captured in
Jerusalem (A.D. 70) being carried in triumph at Rome. We can dis-
tinguish the seven-branched candlestick, the table for the show-bread
and the Sacred Trumpets. The tablets were inscribed with the names
of captured cities
59 RUINS OF PALMYRA (VIEW OF GREAT ARCH FROM THE
EAST) 230
From a photograph by Donald Macbeth of plate xxvi in Robert
Wood's " Ruins of Palmyra," 1753. The city of Palmyra, traditionally
founded by Solomon, at a meeting-point of the Syrian caravan routes,
first rose into prominence in the time of Gallienus, when Odenathus, its
xxi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Saracen prince, was acknowledged by the emperor as " Augustus,"
i.e. a colleague in the imperial power. After his assassination his
widow Zenobia succeeded to his power and ruled magnificently as
Queen of the East until she was defeated and made captive by Aurelian.
The architectural remains are Corinthian in style, embellished with
meaningless oriental ornament
60 BA'ALBEK : THE TEMPLE OF ZEUS 232
Heliopolis or Ba'albek was the centre of a fertile region of Ccele-Syria
on the slopes of Anti-Lebanon. It was always a centre of Baal or Sun
worship, it was a city of priests and its oracle attracted great renown in
the second century A.D. when it was consulted by Trajan. Antoninus
Pius built the great Temple of Zeus (Jupiter), one of the wonders of the
world. The worship was rather that of Baal than of Zeus, and oriental
in character. It included the cult of conical stones such as that brought
to Rome by Elagabalus. The architecture is of the most sumptuous
Corinthian style, with some oriental modifications
61 BA'ALBEK : THE TEMPLE OF BACCHUS, INTERIOR 234
Here we observe the oriental round arch forming the lowest course.
The material of the buildings is white granite with decorations of rough
local marble
62 BA'ALBEK : THE TEMPLE OF BACCHUS, EAST PORTICO 236
Observe the rather effective juxtaposition of fluted and unfluted columns
63 BA'ALBEK : THE CIRCULAR TEMPLE, FROM BACK 238
This small circular temple is of a style without parallel in antiquity.
The nature of the cult is unknown
The last four plates are reproduced by special permission of the Director
of the Royal Museum, Berlin, from photographs supplied by the
Koniglichen Messbildanstalt. They are plates xvii, xxi, zxii, and TTT
respectively, in Puchstein and Von Lupke's " Ba'albek," published for
the German Government by G. Reimer, Berlin
64 (Fig. i) TIMGAD : THE CAPITOL 240
Timgad (Thamugadi) was founded by Trajan as a Roman colony in
A.D. loo. It is on the edge of the Sahara in the ancient province of
Numidia. It has recently been explored by the French. The photo-
graph shows the Capitol raised on an artificial terrace. Two of the
Corinthian columns have been re-erected
(Fig. 2) TIMGAD : THE DECUMANUS MAXIMUS AND TRAJAN'S
ARCH
A view of the main street, spanned by a triumphal arch in honour of
Trajan. The ruts of the carriage-wheels are still visible as at Pompeii.
From photographs by Miss K. P. Blair
65 POMPEII : THERMOPOLION, STREET OF ABUNDANCE 242
From a photograph by d'Agostino. The new street revealed by the
most recent excavations of Prof. Spinazzola. The photograph shows us
a " hot-wine shop " with the bar and the wine-jars
66 POMPEII : MURAL PAINTING, STREET OF ABUNDANCE 244
From a photograph by Abeniacar. Another of the most recent finds,
a fresco of the Twelve Gods
xxii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACE
67 (Fig. i) THE EMPEROR DECIUS 246
From a photograph by Anderson of the bust in the Capitoline Museum,
Rome. A splendid example of the realistic portraiture in the third
century A.D.
(Fig. 2) MARCUS AURELIUS
From a photograph by Mansell & Co. of the bust in the British Museum.
All the portraits of the virtuous philosopher agree in producing this
aspect of tonsorial prettiness which belies the character of a manly and
vigorous prince
68 (Fig. i) THE EMPEROR CARACALLA 250
From a photograph by Mansell & Co. of the bust in the British
Museum
(Fig. 2) THE EMPEROR COMMODUS
From a photograph by Mansell & Co. of the bust in the British Museum
69 RELIEFS FROM BASE OF THE ANTONINE COLUMN 252
From photographs by Anderson of the originals in the Vatican, Rome
(Fig. i) WARRIORS
Represents a military review. The infantrymen with their standards
are grouped in the centre, while the emperor leads a procession of the
cavalry with their vexilla, who march past with what Mrs. Strong
describes as a " fine and pleasing movement." Discussed on p. 292
(Fig. 2) APOTHEOSIS OF ANTONINUS AND FAUSTINA
Antoninus and his less virtuous consort are being borne up to heaven on
the back of Fame or the Genius. The youth reclining below bears the
obelisk of Augustus to indicate that he personifies the Campus Martius.
The figure on the right is Rome. The composition of the scene
displays a ludicrous want of imagination
70 TWO VIEWS OF THE AQUEDUCT OF CLAUDIUS 254
From photographs by Anderson. See p. 293
71 (Fig. i) THE ARCH OF TITUS, ROME 258
See p. 293
(Fig. 2) THE ARCH OF CONSTANTINE, ROME
The Arch of Constantine is adorned with borrowed reliefs, mainly from
the Forum of Trajan. It is the best preserved of the Roman arches.
From photographs by R. C. Smith
72 THE COLOSSEUM, ROME 260
From a photograph by Anderson. Described on p. 293. In the fore-
ground is the ruined apse of the Temple of Venus and Rome, built by
Hadrian
73 THE COLUMN OF TRAJAN 262
From a photograph by Anderson. The great Forum of Trajan was
constructed by the Greek architect Apollodorus between A.D. ill and
114. The base of the column formed a tomb destined to contain
the conqueror's ashes. At the top was his statue, now replaced by an
image of St. Peter. The story of the Dacian war is told on the spiral
relief about I metre broad. See plates 53-56
xxiii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
74 DETAIL OF THE ANTONINE COLUMN 264
From photographs by Anderson. The Antonine Column was con-
structed on the model of the Column of Trajan, seventy-five years later,
and thus affords an insight into the progress of relief sculpture at Rome.
The later work shows more attempt at individual expression, not always
successful, and the scenes are less crowded. They depict episodes from
the German and Sarmatian wars of A.D. 171-175, (a) represents the
decapitation of the rebels and (b) the capture of a German village : the
huts are being burned while M. Aurelius serenely superintends an
execution
75 ANTINOUS 266
(Fig. i) from a photograph by Giraudon of the Mondragore bust in the
Louvre
(Fig. 2) from a photograph by Mansell & Co. of the bust in the British
Museum
The significance of the artistic cult of Antinous in the age of Hadrian is
discussed on p. 293. It is probably only the diffidence of our native
archaeologists which has allowed the colossal Mondragore bust its
supremacy. The British Museum portrait represents him younger and
in the guise of a youthful Dionysius, the expression far more human,
and the treatment of the hair far less elaborate and effeminate
76 ANTINOUS : FROM THE BAS-RELIEF IN THE VILLA ALBANI,
ROME 268
From a photograph by Anderson
77 RELIEFS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 270
(Fig. i). Marcus Aurelius accompanied by Bassseus Rufus, praetorian
prefect, is riding through a wood and receiving the submission of two
barbarian chiefs. In my judgment this scene, and especially the figure
of the foot soldier at the emperor's side, is the chff-d'ceuvre of Roman
historical relief-work
(Fig. 2). Marcus and Bassaeus are sacrificing in front of the temple of the
Capitoline Jove. These panels probably belonged to a triumphal arch
erected in honour of the German and Sarmatian wars of A.D. 171-175.
From photographs by Anderson of the originals in the Conservatori
Palace, Rome
78 TWO VIEWS OF THE ARCH OF TRAJAN, BENEVENTUM 274
From photographs by Alinari. This splendid monument at Bene-
ventum on the Appian Way was erected in A.D. 114 in expectation of
the emperor's triumphant return from the East, where, however, he
died. It is constructed of Greek marble and once carried a quadriga
in bronze. The reliefs on the inside (Fig. i) depict the triumph of
Trajan after his Parthian campaign. Those on the outside (Fig. 2)
represent the Dacian campaigns
79 ALTAR DISCOVERED AT OSTIA 276
From a photograph by Anderson of the original in the National
Museum, Rome. A fine example of decorative art. The motive of the
garlanded skull is a favourite one. This altar was, as the inscription
shows, a work of Hadrian's time
xxiv
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACB
PLATES PAGB
80 TOMB OF THE HATERII 278
From a photograph by Alinari of the fragments in the Lateran Museum,
Rome. Monument to a physician and his family of about A.D. 100.
The scheme is ugly and barbaric, but it includes some very fine decora-
tive work. The f a9ades of five Roman buildings are shown — the Temple
of Isis, the Colosseum, two triumphal arches, and the Temple of
Jupiter Stator. The temples are open and the images visible
81 BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA, SPAIN 282
From a photograph by Lacoste, kindly supplied by Sr. D. Miguel
Utrillo. This superb bridge over the Tagus is 650 feet long. The
design exhibits a rare combination of grace with strength
82 TOMB OF HADRIAN, ROME 284
From a photograph by Anderson. The Castel S. Angelo, restored
as a fortress by Pope Alexander VI. (Borgia), consists mainly of the
Mausoleum of Hadrian ; the bridge leading to it was also constructed
for the emperor's funeral. The circular tower was formerly ornamented
with columns between which were statues. The famous Barberini
Faun was one of them. There was a pyramidal gilt roof, and a colossal
quadriga at the top. The whole building was formerly faced with white
Parian marble. Besides Hadrian, all the Antonines, and Septimius
Severus and Caracalla were buried here. The castle has had a stirring
history in mediaeval times also. The building is modelled upon the
Mausoleum of Caria
83 TWO VIEWS OF HADRIAN'S VILLA, TIVOLI 286
From photographs by R. C. Smith. See p. 296
84 TWO MOSAICS (COLOUR-PLATE) 288
(Fig. i) SACRIFICIAL RITES, PROBABLY AT A TOMB
(Fig. 2) PREPARING FOR A SACRIFICE
From the originals in the British Museum, after photographs by
Donald Macbeth
85 MURAL PAINTING : FLUTE-PLAYER (COLOUR-PLATE) 290
From the original in the British Museum, said to have been found in a
columbarium on the Appian Way
86 POMPEII : TWO VIEWS OF THE RUINS 292
From photographs by R. C. Smith. The upper picture shows how
the buried city has been dug out of the ashes from Vesuvius which form
the subsoil of the surrounding country. The lower picture is a general
view, showing Corinthian columns which formed a colonnade round the
open impluvium
87 POMPEII : HOUSE OF THE VETTII. CUPID FRESCOES 294
From photographs by Brogi. The upper picture shows the Cupids
engaged as goldsmiths ; the lower shows them as charioteers, Apollo
and Artemis below. Two examples of the elegant mythological style
of the Greek decline, but extremely effective for the purpose. This art
is held to have originated in Alexandria
88 POMPEII : FRESCO OF THE SACRIFICE OF IPHIGENIA 296
Collotype plate from a photograph by Brogi. Probably a copy of one
C XXV
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
10 FACE
H.ATES PAGB
of the great pictures of the old Greek masters, Timanthes, about 400 B.C.
If so it is the most important example of early painting in existence.
The psychological motive of the composition is a study of grief.
Calchas the prophet is grieved with foreknowledge, Ajax and Odysseus
are sorrowfully obeying commands which they do not understand.
Iphigenia herself shows the fortitude of a martyr, but Agamemnon's
grief, since he was her father, is too great for a Greek to exhibit. Hence
his face is hidden. Above appears the deer which Artemis allowed to
be substituted for the maiden
89 HOUSE OF LIVIA : INTERIOR DECORATION (COLOUR-PLATE) 300
Reproduced by permission of the German Institute of Archaeology,
from Luckenbach's " Kunst und Geschichte " (grosse Ausgabe, Teil I,
Tafel IV)., by arrangement with R. Oldenbourg, Munich
90 THE ALDOBRANDINI MARRIAGE, VATICAN, ROME 302
From a photograph by Brogi of the fresco now in the Vatican. In the
centre is the veiled bride ; Venus is encouraging her, Charis is compound-
ing sweet essences to add to her beauty, Hymen waits on the bride's left
seated on the threshold stone, outside is a group of three maidens, a
musician, a crowned bridesmaid, and a tire-woman. At the other side
the bride's family is seen. This is without question the most charming
example of ancient painting
91 BRONZE SACRIFICIAL TRIPOD 304
From a photograph by Brogi of the original, discovered at Pompeii,
now in the National Museum, Naples. An example of Hellenic metal-
work of the Augustan age
92 MITHRAS AND BULL 308
From a photograph by Mansell & Co. of the statue in the British
Museum. Represents the Mithraic sacrament of Taurobolium in
which the worshippers received new life by bathing in the blood of a bull.
Mithras wears a Phrygian cap, for the Mithraic religion, though it arose
in Persia, only began to form artistic expression when it passed through
the art region of Asia Minor. This motive constantly recurs in the
monuments of the second and third century all over Europe
93 MAUSOLEUM OF PLACIDIA, RAVENNA 312
From a photograph by Alinari. This little church which contains the
tombs of the Emperor Honorius, her brother, and of Constantius III.,
her husband, as well as a sarcophagus of the Empress in marble,
formerly adorned with plaques of silver, is eloquent of the shrunken
glory of the Western Empire in the fifth century. It was founded
about A.D. 440. It is built in the form of a Latin cross, and is only 49 ft.
l°ng> 41 ft. broad. The interior contains beautiful mosaics. Ravenna
contains many other relics of this period when it was the seat of the
Roman government
94 THE BARBERINI IVORY 314
From a photograph by Giraudon of the original in the Louvre. In
the centre Constantine is represented on horseback with spear reversed
in token of victory. Round him are Victory, a suppliant barbarian,
and Earth with her fruits. To the left is a Roman soldier bearing a
xxvi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE
PLATES **Glt
statuette of Victory. Below the nations of the East bring their tribute.
Above two Victories, in process of transition into angels, support a
medallion of Christ, still of the beardless type associated with Apollo
and Sol Invictus. The emblems of sun, moon, and stars show that
Christian Art is not yet severed from paganism
95 (Fig. i) THE PALACE OF DIOCLETIAN, SPALATO 316
From a photograph by Miss Carr. Diocletian planned this great palace,
which is more like a city or fortress, at Spalato (Salons) on the Dalmatian
coast, for his place of retirement. Its external walls measured 700 ft.
by 580 ft. It was fortified on three sides and entered by three gates.
The arcading in which the oriental arch springs from the Roman
column is the most interesting architectural feature of the extensive
ruins now existing
(Fig. 2) RELIEF FROM THE ARCH OF CONSTANTINE : THE
BATTLE OF THE MILVIAN BRIDGE
From a photograph by Anderson. Shows the really degenerate art
of the fourth century A.D. In this battle (A.D. 312) Constantine
defeated his rival Maxentius, who was drowned with numbers of his
men in the Tiber. The relief shows the drowning
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
PACK
ROMAN At: BRONZE (FULL SIZE) WEIGHT 290 g. 18
The style of the design points to about 350 B.C., and we have no real
evidence of a coinage any earlier. The design is not primitive though
it is clumsily cast. The head of Janus is often found on Greek coins
and so is the galley prow. The weight of the As sank from 12 to I oz. in
the course of republican history
ETRUSCAN FRESCO : HEAD OF HERCULES 21
An example of Etruscan painting which does not differ from
Greek. This is probably a head of Hercules, whose name is found on
Etruscan inscriptions
PREHISTORIC ETRUSCAN POTTERY 22
From Ridgeway's " Early Age of Greece." Black ware decorated with
incised ornament : hippocamps or sea-horses on one : found at Falerii
in Tuscany. Pottery of this type is found on prehistoric sites all over
the Mediterranean
THE ROMAN TOGA 23
The woollen toga was the official dress of the Roman citizen. It was
generally worn over a tunic, though antiquarians, like Cato, wore the
toga alone. It was worn in the natural colour of the wool, but
candidates for office wore it specially whitened, and magistrates had a
purple border
MAP OF ITALY, SHOWING GROUND OVER loco FEET HIGH 69
PLAN OF INFANTRY MANIPLES 97
xxvii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
GALLIC POTTERY 114, 115
It is clearly only a provincial development of the Arretine ware which,
is itself imitated from the Samian ware of Greece
COIN, SHOWING SURRENDER OF THE PARTHIAN STANDARDS 199
COIN : PORTRAIT OF P. QUINTILIUS VARUS 217
ROMAN LIMES 264
A reconstruction of the great frontier lines which encircled the Empire
to the North along the Rhine and Danube. This is the style of the
limes of Upper Germany
THE ROMAN FORUM IN THE EARLY EMPIRE 281
HADRIAN'S TOMB, RESTORED 295
See p. 294
XXV111
INTRODUCTION
questa del Foro tuo solitudine
ogni rumore vince, ogni gloria,
e tutto che al mondo 6 civile,
grande, augusto, egli £ romano ancora.
CARDUCCI.
THE PERSPECTIVE OF ROMAN HISTORY
THENS and Rome stand side by
side as the parents of Western
civilisation. The parental meta-
phor is almost irresistible.
Rome is so obviously masculine
and robust, Greece endowed
with so much loveliness and
charm. Rome subjugates by
physical conquest and govern-
ment. Greece yields so easily
to the Roman might and then
in revenge so easily dominates Rome itself, with all that
Rome has conquered, by the mere attractiveness of
superior humanity. Nevertheless this metaphor of mascu-
line and feminine contains a serious fallacy. Greece, too,
had had days of military vigour. It was by superior
courage and skill in fighting that Athens and Sparta had
beaten back the Persian invasions of the fifth century
before Christ, and thus saved Europe for occidentalism.
Again it was by military prowess that Alexander the Great
carried Greek civilisation to the borders of India, Hellenising
Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, Egypt, Phoenicia and even
Palestine. This he did just at the moment when Rome was
A I
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
winning her dominion over Latium. Instead, then, of looking
at Greece and Rome as two coeval forces working side by
side we must regard them as predecessor and successor.
Rome is scarcely revealed as a world-power until she meets
Greek civilisation in Campania near the beginning of the
third century before Christ. The physical decline of Greece
is scarcely apparent until her phalanx returns beaten in battle
by the Roman maniples at Beneventum. Moreover, in
addition to this chronological division of spheres there is also
a geographical division. Greece takes the East, Rome the
West, and though by the time that Rome went forth to
govern her Western provinces she was already pretty
thoroughly permeated with Greek civilisation, yet the West
remained throughout mediaeval history far more Latin than
Greek. When Constantine divided the empire he was only
expressing in outward form a natural division of culture.
The resemblances between Rome and Greece even from
the first are very clearly marked. In many respects they are
visibly of the same family, and though we no longer speak as
confidently of "Aryan" and "Indo-European" as did the
ethnologists and philologists of the nineteenth century, yet
there remains an obvious kinship of language, customs, and
even dress. Many of the most obvious similarities, such
as those of religion, are now seen to be the result of
later borrowing, but there remains a distinct cousinship,
whether derived from the conquest of both peninsulas by
kindred tribes of northern invaders, as Ridgeway holds, or
from the existence of an aboriginal Mediterranean race, as
Sergi believes — or from both.
But with all these resemblances, one of the most interest-
ing features of ancient history lies in the psychological con-
trast between Greece and Rome, or rather between Athens
and Rome.' Athens is rich in ideas, full of the spirit of
inquiry, and hence fertile in invention, fond of novelty,
worshipping brilliance of mind and body. Rome is stolid
and conservative, devoted to tradition and law. Gravity and
INTRODUCTION
the sense of duty are her supreme virtues. Here we have
the two types that succeed and conquer, set side by side for
comparison. To which is the victory in the end ?
To the Englishman of to-day Rome is in some ways far
more familiar than Greece. Apart from obvious resemblances
in history and in character, Rome touches our own domestic
history, and any man who has marked the stability of old
Roman foundations or the straightness of old Roman roads
has already grasped a fundamental truth about her. He is '
surely not far wrong in the general sense of irresistible
power, of blind energy and rigid law, which he associates
with the name of Rome. Thus, there is not as there was in
the case of Greece any radical misconception of the Roman
character to be combated.
But there is, it appears, a widely prevalent false perspec- -
live in the common view of Roman history. The modern
reader, especially if he be an Englishman, is a very stern
moralist in his judgment of other nations and ages. In addi-
tion to this he is a citizen of an empire now extremely self-
conscious and somewhat bewildered at its own magnitude.
He cannot help drawing analogies from Roman history and
seeking in it "morals" for his own guidance. The Roman
empire bears such an obvious and unique resemblance to
the British that the fate of the former must be of enormous
interest to the latter. For this reason alone we are apt to
regard the fall of Rome as the cardinal point of Roman
history. To this must be added the influence of Gibbon's
great work. By Gibbon we are led to contemplate above
all things (with Silas Wegg) her Decline and Fall. Thus
Rome has become for many people simply a colossal failure
and a horrible warning. We behold her first as a Republic
tottering to her inevitable ruin, and then as an Empire
decaying from the start and continuing to fester for some
five hundred years. This is one of the cases which prove
that History is made not so much by heroes or natural
forces as by historians. It is an accident of historiography
3
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
that the Republic was not described by any great native
historian until its close, when amid the horrors of civil war
men set themselves to idealise the heroes of extreme anti-
quity and thus left a gloomy picture of unmitigated deteriora-
tion. As there was no great historian in sympathy with the
imperial regime, the reputation of the early Empire was left
mainly in the hands of Tacitus and Suetonius, the former of
whom riddled it with epigrams while the latter befouled it
with scandal. Nearly all Roman writers had a rhetorical
training and a satirical bent : all Romans were praisers of
the past. Thus it is that Roman virtue has receded into an
age which modern criticism declares to be mythological. It
is a further accident that the genius of Rome's greatest
modern historian was also strongly satirical. It was a natural
affinity of temper which led Gibbon to continue the story of
Tacitus and to dip his pen into the same bitter fluid.
Thus Rome has found few impartial historians and hardly
any sympathetic ones. But is it possible to be sympathetic ?
While every true scholar feels a thrill at the name of Greece,
scarcely any one loves Ancient Rome. At the first mention
of her name the average man's thoughts fly to the Colosseum
and the Christian martyr " facing the lion's gory mane " to
the music of Nero's fiddle. His second thought is to formu-
late his explanation of her decline and fall. The explanations "
are as various as political complexions. " Luxury," says the
moralist, " Heathendom," says the Christian, " Christianity,"
replies Gibbon. The Protectionist can easily show that it
was due to the importation of free corn, while the Free
Trader draws attention to the enormous burdens which Roman
trade had to bear. " Militarism," explains the peace-lover ;
"neglect of personal service," replies the conscriptionist.
The Liberal and the Conservative can both draw valuable
conclusions from Roman history in support of their respective
attitudes of mind. "If it had not been for demagogues like
Marius and the Gracchi," says the Conservative, " Rome
might have continued to exhibit the courage and patriotism
4
:
•a." It-i...
INTRODUCTION
which she displayed under senatorial guidance in the war
against Hannibal, instead of rushing to her doom by way of
sedition and disorder." With equal justice the Liberal points
to the stupid bigotry with which that corrupt oligarchy, the
senate, delayed necessary reforms. That, he says, was the
cause of the downfall of Rome. That was the writing on the
wall.
Whether it is or is not possible to love Ancient Rome,
I would suggest that this attitude of treating her merely as a
subject for autopsies and a source of gloomy vaticinations for
the benefit of the British Empire is a preposterous affront to
history. The mere notion of an empire continuing to decline
and fall for five centuries is ridiculous. It is to regard as a
failure the greatest civilising force in all the history of Europe,
the most stable form of government, the strongest military
and political system that has ever existed.
It is just at this point that our own generation can add
something of great importance to the study of Roman
history. Whatever may be said for its faith, hope is the
great discovery of our age. By the help of that blessed
word "Evolution" we have learnt not to put our Golden
Ages in the past but in the future. In many instances we
have discovered that what our fathers called decay was really
progress. May it not be so with Rome ?
The destiny or function of Rome in world-history was
nothing more or less than the making of Europe. • The
modern family of European nations are her sons and
daughters, and some of her daughters have grown up and
married foreign husbands and given birth to offspring. For
this great purpose it was necessary that the city itself should
pass through the phases of growth, maturity and decay. In
political terms, it was part of the Roman destiny to translate
the civilisation of the city-state into that of the nation or
territorial state. Having evolved the Province it was
necessary that the City should expire. Conquest on a
colossal scale was part of the programme, absolute centralised
5
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Unless we are prepared to accept the rank of progenies
vitiosissima we are compelled to discount this whole tendency
of thought and read our authorities between the lines. They
were all rhetoricians, all bent on praising the past at the
expense of the present and the future ; none of them were
over-scrupulous in dealing with evidence. If all the historians
had perished and only the inscriptions remained we should
have a very different picture of the Roman empire, a
picture much brighter and, I think, much more faithful to
truth.
LATINISM
Hellenism we know and understand ; every true classical
scholar is a Hellenist by conviction. But what is Latinism
and who are our Latinists ? The altar fires are extinct and
the votaries are scattered. Except for a small volume of the
choicest Latin poetry of the Augustan age, what that is Latin
gives us pleasure to-day ? Greek studies seem to attract all
that is most brilliant and genial in the world of scholarship :
Latin is mainly relegated to the dry-as-dusts. Who reads
Lucan out of school hours ? Who would search Egypt for
Cicero's lost work " De Gloria " ? Who would recognise a
quotation from Statius ?
It has not always been so. Once they quoted Lucan and
Seneca across the floor of the House of Commons. The
eighteenth century was far more in sympathy with Ancient
Rome than we are. In those days it would not have seemed
absurd to argue the superiority of Vergil over Homer. Down
to that day Latin had remained the alternative language for
educated people, the medium of international communication,
even for diplomacy, until French gradually took its place.
Only if you specifically sought to reach the vulgar did you
write in English. Though Dr. Johnson could write a very
pretty letter in French, he used habitually to converse with
Frenchmen in Latin ; not that it made him more intelligible,
for, in fact, no foreigner could understand the English pro-
8
INTRODUCTION
nunciation of Latin ; but that he did not wish to appear at a
disadvantage with a mere Frenchman by adopting a foreign
jargon. As for public inscriptions, though half the literary
men in London signed a round-robin entreating the great
autocrat to write Oliver Goldsmith's epitaph in English,
Johnson "refused to disgrace the walls of Westminster
Abbey with an English inscription."
What is the cause of the eclipse which Latin studies are
still suffering? One cause, perhaps, is to be found in the
misuse of the language by the pedagogues and philologists
of the past in the school and the examination-room. But
another cause is the recent discovery of the true Greek civi-
lisation, whereby scholars have come to realise that Latin
culture is in the main only secondary and derivative. At the
present moment we are passing through a stage of revolt
against classicism, convention, and artificiality. We know
that Greek culture, truly discerned, is neither " classic " nor
conventional nor artificial, but Latinism is still apparently
subject to all these terms. The Latinity of Cicero, Vergil,
Ovid, Horace, Lucan, and the greater part of the giants, in
fact all the Latin of our schools is — what Greek is not — really
and truly classical. They were not writing as they spoke
and thought. They had studied the laws of expression in the
school of rhetoric, and on pain of being esteemed barbarous
they wrote under those laws. Style was their aim. Their
very language was subject to arbitrary laws of syntax and
grammar. The English schoolboy who approaches Cicero
by way of the primer's rules and examples is entering into
Latin literature by much the same road as the Romans
themselves. The Romans were grammarians by instinct
and orators by education. Thus Latin is fitted by nature for
schoolroom use, and for all who would learn and study words,
which after all are thoughts, Latin is the supremely best
training-ground. The language marches by rule. Rules
govern the inflexions and the concords of the words. The
periods are built up logically and beautifully in obedience to
9
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
law. Latin, of all languages, least permits translation. You
have only to translate Cicero to despise him.
In the world of letters, as in that of politics, there are
the virtues of order and the virtues of liberty. Our own
eighteenth century was logical in mind because it had to
clothe its thoughts in a language of precision. But even
Pope and Addison are rude barbarians compared with Vergil
and Cicero. De giistibus non est disputandum — let some
prefer the plain roast and others the made dish. Latin may
be an acquired taste, but no sort of excellence is mortal.
Latin will come into its own again along with Dryden and
Congreve, along with patches and periwigs. Meanwhile it
must be a very dull soul who is unmoved by the grandeur of
Roman history, the triumphant march of the citizen legions,
the dogged patriotism which resisted Hannibal to the death,
and the pageantry and splendour of the Empire. One must
be blind not to admire the massive strength of her ruined
monuments, arches, bridges, roads, and aqueducts. And
one must be deaf indeed not to enjoy the surges of Ciceronian
oratory or the rolling music of the Vergilian hexameter.
Greece may claim all the charm of the spring-time of civilisa-
tion, but Rome in all her works has a majesty which must
command, if not love, wonder and respect. Mommsen justly
remarks that " it is only a pitiful narrow-mindedness that will
object to the Athenian that he did not know how to mould
his State like the Fabii and Valerii, or to the Roman that
he did not learn to carve like Phidias and to write like
Aristophanes."
Under the flowing toga of Latinism the natural Roman is
concealed from our view. It is possible that the progress of
research and excavation may to some extent rediscover him
and distinguish him, as it has already done for his Hellenic
brother, from the polished courtiers of the Augustan age who
have hitherto passed as typical products of Rome.
It is astonishing how little we really know of Rome and
the Romans after all that has been said and written about
10
INTRODUCTION
them. The ordinary natural Roman is a complete stranger to
us. It is certain that he did not live in luxury like Maecenas,
but how did he live and what sort of man was he ? We can
discern that his language was not in the least like that of
Cicero. It appears that he neither dreaded nor disliked
emperors like Nero, as did Tacitus and Juvenal. As for his
religion, much has already been done, and more still remains
to be done, to show that he did not really worship the
Hellenised Olympians who pass in literature for his gods.
Recent scholarship has done something to reveal to us the
presence of a real national art in Rome, or at any rate of an
artistic development on Italian soil which made visible steps
of its own out of Hellenic leading-strings. Thus there is
some hope that the real Roman will not always elude us.
But for the present in the whole domain of art, religion,
thought, and literature, Greek influence has almost obliterated
the native strain. For the present, therefore, we must be
content to regard Roman civilisation as mainly derivative,
and our principal object will be to see how Rome fulfilled her
task as the missionary of Greek thought. This object, to-
gether with the unsatisfactory nature of the records, must
excuse the haste with which I have passed over the earlier
stages of Roman republican history. It is obvious that the
first three centuries of our era will be the important part of
Roman history from this point of view. Also, if the progress
of civilisation be our main study, nothing in Roman history
before the beginning of the second century B.C. can come
directly under our attention. When the Romans first came
into contact with the Greeks they were still barbarians, with
no literature, no art, and very little industry or commerce.
The earlier periods will only be introductory.
ITALY AND THE ROMAN
The pleasant land of Italy needs no description here.
Our illustrations* will recall its sunny hill-sides, its deep
* Plates i, 2, 3, 8, and 70.
II
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
shadows, its vineyards and olive-yards. But there are one
or two features of its geography which have a bearing upon
the history of Rome.
To begin with, the geographical unity of the Italian
peninsula is more apparent than real. The curving formation
of the Apennines really divides Italy into four parts — (i) the
northern region, mainly consisting of the Po valley, a fertile
plain which throughout the Republican period was scarcely
considered as part of Italy at all, and was, in fact, inhabited
by barbarian Gauls ; (2) the long eastern strip of Adriatic
coast, an exposed waterless and harbourless region, with a
scanty population, which hardly comes into ancient history ;
(3) the southern region of Italy proper, hot, fertile, and rich
in natural harbours, so that it very early attracted the notice
of the Greek mariners, and was planted with luxurious and
populous cities long before Rome came into prominence ;
and (4) the central plain facing westward, in which the river
Tiber and the city of Rome occupy a central position.
Etruria and Latium together fill the greater part of it. Its
width is only about eighty miles, so that there is no room for
any considerable rivers to develop, and, in fact, there are
only four rivers of any importance in a coast-line of more
than 300 miles. We may call the whole of this region a plain
in distinction from the Apennine highlands ; but it is, of
course, plentifully scattered with hills high enough to provide
an impregnable citadel, and to this day crowned with huddled
villages.
Rome herself on her Seven Hills began her career by
securing dominion over the Latin plain which surrounded her
on all sides but the north. The Roman Campagna,* which is
now desolate and fever-stricken, was once all populous farm-
land. The river Tiber, though its silting mouth and tideless
waters now render it useless for navigation, was in the
flourishing days of Ancient Rome navigable for small vessels
and Ostia was a good artificial harbour at its mouth. Thus
* Plate a.
12
INTRODUCTION
it is history rather than geography which has made Rome
into an unproductive capital. We may conclude that geography
has placed Rome in a favourable position for securing the
control of the Mediterranean and especially of the western
part of it.
It is worth while also to notice the neighbours by whom
she was surrounded when she first struggled forward into the
light. Just across the Tiber to the north of her were the
Etruscans of whom we shall see more in the next chapter.
Their pirate ships scoured the sea while their merchants did
business with the Greeks of Sicily, Magna Graecia and
Massilia. It was perhaps her position at the tete du pont that
led to Rome's early prominence in war. Across the water on
the coast of Africa was the dreaded city of Carthage, which
had for centuries been striving to establish itself on the
island of Sicily. All these were seafaring, commercial
peoples, but it was not by sea that Rome met them. Behind
Rome, among the valleys and on the spurs of the Apennines,
were a whole series of sturdy highland clans who like all
highlanders noticed the superior fatness of the valley sheep.
It was against these Umbrians, Marsians, Pelignians, Sabines,
and Samnites that the cities of the plain were constantly at
feud, and it was mainly her struggles with these that kept the
Roman swords bright in early days. •
As to the Romans themselves and their origin there is
little that we can say for certain. Ancient ethnology is not
by any means yet secure of its premises. One thing is clear
enough, if we can place any reliance whatever upon literary
records — the national characteristics of the ancient Roman
were very unlike those of the modern Italian. The one was
bold, hardy, grave, orderly and inartistic : the other is
sensitive, vivacious, artistic, turbulent and quick-witted.
There is not a feature in common between them and yet the
modern Italian is surely the normal South European type.
As you go southwards through France you find the people
approaching these characteristics more and more. The
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Spaniard and the Greek share them. The Ancient Roman
of republican days, unless he is a literary invention, is assuredly
no southerner in temperament, though the southern qualities
undoubtedly begin to grow clear as Roman history progresses.
And then the whole of early Roman history is marked by a
strife between the two orders Patrician and Plebeian, which
is certainly not simply a struggle between two political parties,
nor a mere conflict between rich and poor. There is a
division between the two of religion and custom in such
matters as burial, for example, and marriage-rites. The
patricians fear contamination of their blood if the plebeians
are allowed to intermarry with them. These considerations
and others like them have led Prof. Ridgeway to formulate
for Rome, as he has already done with success for Greece,
a theory of northern invasion and conquest in very early
days. Probably it is a theory which can never be proved
nor disproved, so woefully scanty is our evidence for the
earliest centuries of Roman history. But it explains the
great riddle of Roman character as no other theory does.
The archaeology of the spade does not help us much
though it has made some interesting discoveries on the soil
of Italy. There is of course at the base a Neolithic culture
resembling that of the rest of Europe. Then there is a phase
of pile-dwellings widely spread among the marshes of the
Lombard plain called the " Terramare " civilisation. As
this phase belongs to the bronze age we may infer that
civilisation developed later in Italy than in Greece owing
to the lack of fortified cities. In this Terramare period the
dead were carefully buried whole, often folded up into a
sitting posture to fit their contracted graves. Then comes
an Early Iron period, called "The Villanova," where the
cremated ashes of the dead are collected in urns and
deposited in vaults generally walled with flat slabs of stone.
Above these two stages come Etruscan and Gallic remains
and then those of the Rome of history. It is probable
enough that the Iron Age of the Villanova culture repre-
INTRODUCTION
sents a conquest from the north. It is likely that in pre-
historic times Italy experienced the same fate as throughout
the ages of history. The Alpine passes are easier from
north to south than in the reverse direction, and the smiling
plains of North Italy have always possessed an irresistible
attraction for the barbarian who looks down upon them
from those barren snow-clad heights. Whether the invader
be an Umbrian or Gaulish or Gothic or Austrian warrior,
Italia must pay the price for her " fatal gift of beauty."
I
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
arx aeternae dominationis.
TACITUS.
HAT Rome was not built in a day
is the only thing we really know
about the origin of Rome. There
is, however, nothing to prevent
us from guessing. The modern
historian of the Economic School
would picture to us a limited
company of primeval men of
business roaming about the world
until they found a spot in the
centre of the Mediterranean, a
convenient depot alike for Spanish copper and Syrian frankin-
cense, handy for commerce with the Etruscans of the north,
the Sicilian Greeks of the south, and the Carthaginians of the
African coast. They select a piece of rising ground on the
banks of the river Tiber, about fifteen miles from its mouth, a
spot safe and convenient for their cargo-boats, and there they
build an Exchange, found a Chamber of Commerce (which
they quaintly term senatus], and institute that form of public
insurance which is known as "an army." Thus equipped
they proceed by force or fraud to acquire a number of
markets, to which in due course they give the name of
" Empire."
This picture, being modern, is naturally impressionistic
and rather vague in its details. From all accounts a good
16
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
deal of engineering would be required to make the natural
Tiber suitable for navigation on a large scale. Not only does
its mouth silt up every year and its channel constantly change,
but just between the hills on the very floor of Rome every
spring made pools and swamps. Nor is there any tide in the
Mediterranean to help the rowers up to the city against the
stream. The Etruscans, who diversified their commercial
operations with systematic piracy, held almost the whole of
this western coast in subjection. The Greeks of the south,
who have plenty to say about Etruscan and Carthaginian sea-
farers, have forgotten to mention their early Roman customers.
But perhaps that is because the primeval trader from Rome
cannot have had anything much to sell, and certainly had no
money at all to buy with. In founding his Bourse he seems
to have forgotten to provide a Mint ; at any rate, long after
the Sicilian Greeks had evolved a most exquisite coinage of
silver and gold, the Romans were still content with the huge
and clumsy copper as. I think we may confidently dismiss .
external trade from among the causes of the early rise of Rome.
The coinage is the surest evidence we possess ; no foreign
trade could have passed in the Mediterranean on a basis of
the copper as, and in Latin the equivalent for "money" is a
word denoting "cattle." Whoever the early Romans were,
they were mainly, as all their religion and traditions show,
land-soldiers and farmers.
Livy takes a more sensible view. He admits that the
current accounts of the foundation of the city are involved in
mystery and miracle, but he asserts with justice that if any
city deserved a miraculous origin Rome did. Thereupon he
proceeds to relate the pleasant tale of her foundation in the
year 753 B.C. by Romulus and Remus.
It is surely unprofitable to search very deeply for grains of
truth in the sands of legend which cover the early traditions
of Rome, but it is sometimes interesting to conjecture how
and why the legends were invented. The story of Romulus
and Remus, for example, may have taken its rise in a
B 17
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
"sacristan's tale" about an ancient work of art representing
Roman As (bronze, full size)
a wolf suckling two babes. A fairly ancient copy of this
motive is preserved in the famous Capitoline Wolf.* The
* Plate 4.
18
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
wolf at least is ancient, and the children have been added in
modern times from representations of the famous group on
ancient coins. It is possible that the original statue may go
back to days of totemistic religion when the wolf was the
ancestor of a Roman clan.
The Seven Kings of Rome are for the most part mere
names which have been fitted by rationalising antiquarians,
presumably Greek, with inventions appropriate to them.
Romulus is simply the patron hero of Rome called by her
name. Numa, the second, whose name suggests numen, was
the blameless Sabine who originated most of the old Roman
cults, and received a complete biography largely borrowed
from that invented for Solon. Tullus Hostilius and Ancus
Martius were the hostile and martial inventors of military
systems. Servius Tullius was a man of servile origin, and
on this foundation Freeman built his belief that the Roman
kingship was a career open to talent !
As for the two Tarquins, the latter of whom was turned
by Greek historians into a typical Greek tyrant and made the
subject of an edifying Greek story of tyrannicide closely
modelled on the story of Harmodius, their names are said to
be Etruscan. There is a recent theory that the saving of
Rome by Horatius and his comrades is fable designed to
conceal the real conquest of Rome by the Etruscans. As a
matter of fact there is a good deal of other evidence for that
theory : reluctant admissions in history and literature, records
of an ancient treaty of submission, the fact that the ritual and
ornament of supreme authority at Rome seems to be of
Etruscan origin, and above all the evidence of the stones.
There are traces of very early skill and activity in building
at Rome, and, unless the Romans afterwards declined very
remarkably in the arts and crafts, their early works, such as
the walls and some of the sewers, must have been built under
foreign influence. That some sort of early kingship at Rome
is more than a legend is certain ; the whole fabric of the
Roman constitution and its fundamental theory of imperium
19
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
imply the existence of primeval kingship. On the whole,
then, we may well believe that at some early period the city
of Rome under Etruscan princes formed part of an empire
which embraced a number of ports and towns up and down
the Italian coast, though it did not necessarily concern itself
with the intervening and surrounding territories. During all
the early centuries of Rome it must have been a constant
struggle between civilised walled towns on or near the coast
and warlike hill tribes, quite uncivilised, from the mountainous
interior.
These mysterious Etruscans have formed the theme of an
internecine war of monographs. On the whole we may pro-
nounce that. those scholars who maintain their Lydian origin
have completely demolished the arguments of those who aver
that they sprang from the Rhaetian Alps — and vice versa. 1 1
remains possible, therefore, that the Etruscans came from
nowhere in particular but were as aboriginal and autoch-
thonous as any European people. It is true that we cannot
make out much of their language, but that is also true of the
aboriginal Cretans — and of many other autochthonous peoples.
Their earliest remains are of a type familiar to us in the earliest
strata of production all over the Mediterranean coast-lands—
prehistoric polygonal masonry, a beehive tomb, incised bucchero
nero vases and so forth. Their later and finer work shows
a distinct cousinship with that of Greece though sometimes
curiously debased and uncouth in spirit. In bronze- working
they were very skilful.* They developed painting to a high
pitch in early times, and the British Museum possesses some
interesting examples from Caere. It was indeed believed by
Pliny that Corinthian painters had settled in Etruria, that
being the usual account by which the ancients explained
resemblances. But we may believe that the art of painting
is indigenous on the soil of Tuscany. Their pottery is very
similar to that of Greece.f It appears that the flourishing
period of Etruscan art coincided with that of the greatest
* Plate 5. f Plate 6
2O
BL
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
extent of their empire, namely, the sixth and early fifth centuries
Their plastic work was mostly in terra-cotta, for the
B.C.
native marbles do not seem to have been quarried. Some of
their terra-cotta coffins, adorned with conventional portraits of
Etruscan Fresco : Head of Hercules
the deceased and finished off by the application of paint, show
considerable technical skill, but always that strange grotesque
spirit.* From all accounts these Etruscans were a superstitious
and cruel race. It was from them that the Romans learnt
their bloody craft of divination by the inspection of the
entrails of newly slain victims, and there is little doubt that the
victims had not always been the lower animals. We are told
that the insignia of royalty at Rome — the toga with scarlet
* Plate 7.
21
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
or purple stripes, the toga with purple border, the sceptre of
ivory, the curule chair, the twelve lictors with their axes in
bundles of rods — were borrowed from the Etruscans. Thus
it seems that the ancient garb of the Roman citizen, a tunic
covered by a long mantle or toga, a costume which is
Prehistoric Etruscan Pottery
essentially the same as the chiton and himation of the Greeks,
started as a fashion introduced by their more civilised northern
neighbours. 1 1 seems clear also that the earliest Roman art, the
decoration of temples with painted terra-cotta ornaments, was
Etruscan in origin. Some of the earliest statues of the gods
seem to have been painted, for we hear of a very ancient
red Jupiter. Thus there is some probability that Rome passed
through a period, perhaps in the sixth century, of alien rule
and alien civilisation. Remembering the cousinship between
Greece and Etruria we shall find that Rome had been pre-
pared for the reception of Greek culture in very early
times.
22
f\
a
tn
<
Z
>
5
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
The fifth century seems to have been a period of decline
for the Etruscan power. The Greek republics, with, as I
hope we agreed, their northern
stiffening, had advanced far
beyond their Etruscan kinsmen
in intelligence, and the tyrant
Hiero of Syracuse defeated
them in a great sea-fight in
474 B.C. It is agreeable to
the historian to have a fact
so certain and a date so well
attested in all the wilderness
of legend that surrounds the
early history of Italy. Then
the warlike hill tribes of the
Southern Apennines began to
press upon their southern
colonies, and finally the Gauls
from the north swept down
upon Etruria at the beginning
of the fourth century and broke
up their declining empire for
ever. It was probably during
this period that the Romans ex-
pelled their Etruscan princes,
and replaced royalty by a pair
of equal colleagues sharing
most of the royal power and
regal emblems except crown
and sceptre. So we get to
the Rome of the earliest
credible tradition — a Rome
governed by two consuls and
a senate of nobles. It is a city
composed of farm-houses and The Roman Toga
in each house the head of the family rules in patriarchal majesty.
23
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
THE GROWING REPUBLIC
Thus it is necessary to throw overboard a great mass of
edifying and famous history in the interest of youth. There
were no contemporary records, the annals and fasti upon
which Livy's immediate predecessors relied in the first century
B.C. are demonstrably of late concoction. Everywhere we
can see the influence of Greek artists importing fragments
of Greek history, rationalising names and customs, antedating
and reduplicating later constitutional struggles, writing appro-
priate speeches for early parliamentarians who never existed,
and generally demonstrating the power of Greek invention to
flatter Roman credulity. The great families of 200 B.C. and
onwards found themselves as rich and powerful as nabobs ;
they had great historic names, and when there was a funeral
in the family they sent out a long procession of waxen images
to represent the noble ancestors of the deceased. At
such times there would be funeral orations recounting the
deeds of those heroic ancestors. Every family had its
traditions, as glorious and as authentic as those of the
descendants of Brian Boru. When literature came into
fashion and needy Greek scribes offered a plausible stilus to
any rich patron, Roman history began to exist, sometimes
bearing respectable Roman names but always written in
Greek. It is thus that we get the series of heroic actions
attributed to Fabii and Horatii and deeds of wicked pride
ascribed to ancestral Claudii. Whatever it may cost us in
pangs for the fate of pretty tales I fear we must not scruple
to use the knife freely in this region of literary history. A
glance at the following coincidences will help to allay our
scruples : Tarquin the Roman tyrant was driven out in the
same year as Hippias the Athenian tyrant (510 B.C.) ;
the Twelve Tables at Rome were drawn up in the same
year as the code of Protagoras at Thurii (45 1 B.C.) ; 300
Fabii died to a man in the battle of Cremera just about the
same time as 300 Spartans died to a man with Leonidas at
24
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
Thermopylae in 480 B.C. To put it briefly : Nothing anterior
to the Gallic invasion of 390 B.C. and very little for nearly
another century can be accepted on literary evidence alone.
So far as we can read the stones, the earliest Rome con-
sisted of a settlement on the Palatine Hill, with a citadel
and a temple on the Capitol, and with a forum or market on
the low ground between them. On the Esquiline Hill was a
plebeian settlement. It was a pastoral and agricultural com-
munity, expressing wealth in terms of cattle, ploughing and
reaping so much of the Campagna as their farmers could
reach in a day or their armies protect. From the very earliest/
times the community consisted of a few great houses of
patrician blood with numerous clients and slaves. In every
house the father was king absolute, with power of life and
death over his sons, daughters, and slaves. Daughters passed
from the hand of the father to the hand of the husband, like
any other property, by a form of sale. Out of remote
antiquity comes a piece of genuine Latin :
SI PARENTEM PVER VERBERIT AST OLE PLORASIT PVER
DIVIS PARENTVM SACER ESTO
— " If a boy beats his father and the father complains let the
boy be devoted to the gods of parents," i.e. slain as a sacrifice.
It was a commonwealth of such parents — no republican lovers
of liberty, be sure — whose chiefs met to discuss policy in the
temple, as the Senate, and who themselves assembled in a
body, fully armed, as the comitium, to vote upon the Senate's
decrees conveyed by the consuls.
Grim and despotic in peace these Roman aristocrats were
fierce and tenacious in war. As soon as she was free, if not
earlier, Rome appeared as a member of the Latin League
which ruled over the Plain of Latium under the presidency of
Alba Longa. This piece of tradition is attested by many
survivals in ritual. Her earliest wars were against neighbours
like Gabii, whose very name made the later Romans smile,
so insignificant a village it was. It was in these little contests
25
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
that the early Romans learnt their trade as warriors, and if
any one seeks to know the causes of Rome's victorious career
the answer is, I suppose, that she fought very bravely and
obeyed her generals better than her enemies obeyed theirs.
• Discipline was her secret, and discipline came, no doubt,
from the strict patriarchal system in her homes, a system
assuredly not of Mediterranean birth.
Whether the geese who cackled were authentic or merely
setiological fowls I know not, but it is certain that Rome did
not suffer so severely from the Gallic invasion as did her
neighbours across the Tiber. Probably it was only the last
wave of a great invasion which reached as far as Rome, burnt
the Palatine settlement and the humble wattled dwellings of
the poor on the Esquiline, and failed to storm the Capitol.
At any rate the Gallic invasion of 390 B.C. seems to have
started the Romans on their career of conquest, mainly at the
expense of the Etruscans. But there were incessant wars
with all her neighbours ; every summer the army marched
out as a matter of course. If it was not a decaying Etruscan
town to be taken by siege it was a Latin neighbour, or failing
them a Volscian or Sabine community from the hills. Summer,
while the corn could be left to do its own growing, was the
time for battle. To have been at peace in summer would
have been slackness, to wage war in winter a grave solecism.
So in short space Rome became an important little town,
head of the Latin League and probably the strongest unit in
Central Italy. It appears that she began about now to
emerge into international notice by the great powers, for we
have a treaty of 348 B.C., which may probably be accepted as
genuine though the actual date is not so certain, between
Rome and Carthage, wherein the Romans, in consideration
of promising not to trade in Carthaginian waters, are per-
mitted to do business with the Carthaginian ports in Sicily
and acknowledged as suzerains of the Latin League. Thus
Rome has apparently by this time some overseas traffic.
If no other art, diplomacy seems always to have been at
26
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
home on Roman soil, and in all her works Rome shows a
genius for statecraft. It must have been at some very early
date that she discovered her great secret of divide et impera.
She had already become so far the greatest power in the
Latin League, that she had equal rights with all the others
combined. The allies, it seems, claimed to supply the general
of the allied army on alternate days and to have a half-
share of the plunder. Against these very modest demands
Rome was firm. She fought the League and beat it in 338 ;
then she divided and ruled the cities. With each she made a
separate treaty, granting to each two of the rights of citizen-
ship— the right to trade and the right to marry with her
citizens. But she allowed no such rights between the other
members of the League, however close neighbours they
might be. In this way Rome became the staple market of
all Latium ; all traffic passed through her hands and her
wealth and population increased.
These city-states had no means of ruling otherwise
than tyrannically. Their whole constitution forbade it. We
have seen elsewhere * that citizenship in a city-state implied
membership of a corporate body, a close partnership in a
company of unlimited liability with very definite privileges
and responsibilities. Full citizenship at Rome meant a vote
in electing the city magistrates and a vote in the comitium,
which decided matters like peace and war. It was obvious
that you had to be very jealous about extending these rights
to outsiders. But Rome went part of the way, granted parts
of the citizen rights, and thereby showed finer imperial state-
craft than any Greek state had yet discovered. Her first
offshoot was Ostia, the town she planted at the mouth of her
river only fifteen miles off, her first Colonia. The men of
Ostia remained citizens of Rome, and might vote in the
elections if they thought it worth while, but were exempt
from the duty of serving in the army because their own town
formed a standing garrison in the Roman service. Then
* See " The Glory that was Greece," pp. 10-11, &c.
27
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
when the Romans made conquests in Etruria or Campania
or any region where the natives spoke a foreign language
and therefore could not fight in the legions under Roman
officers, they would receive the "citizenship without vote,"
which enabled them simply to trade and marry like Romans.
Thirdly, some of the Latin towns became merely municipia,
that is, country towns enjoying full Roman citizenship if they
came to the city, but at home a local constitution with
considerable powers of self-government and a magistracy
modelled on that of Rome, namely, senators and consuls
under other names. All this granting of rights — without
any tribute — was, according to the ways of ancient city-states,
surprising generosity or the deepest statesmanship. Already
•Rome begins to show the genius of empire-building : she was
relentless and unscrupulous in conquering, but generous and
broad-minded in governing. Such was the wisdom of her
council of despots— the Senate.
Nevertheless these "allies" were more sensible of the
liberties they had lost than of the rights they had gained by
coming under the expanding wing of Rome. The latter
part of the fourth century shows the growing state embarked
upon a terrific struggle which lasted on and off from summer
to summer for nearly fifty years. Her principal foes were
the warlike Samnites of the Southern Apennines, closely
akin, it seems, to the dominant race at Rome. This
tremendous conflict is clearly the turning-point of Roman
history. At various stages nearly all the peoples of Italy
rose and enrolled themselves among the enemy, the Latins,
the Etruscans, the Umbrians, the Marsi, the Gauls (for they
too were brought in again by the Etruscans in their last
efforts for freedom) and the Samnites themselves, a race of
born fighters under competent generals. Once, in 321 B.C.,
both consuls and the entire army of Rome were entrapped at
the Caudine Pass, but Rome never thought of surrender.
Doggedly her Senate refused to know when it was beaten
and continued the struggle. Fortunately it was one purpose
28
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
against many, and Rome beat her enemies in detail until she
was able to emerge victorious.
The history of that great conflict has come down to us in
an incomplete state full of fairy-tales and omissions, but it is
clear that the Roman Senate showed extraordinary resolution
and tenacity, as it did in the next century against foreign
enemies. Beaten to its knees again and again it refused any
terms of peace short of victory. That is a marvellous thing,
if Rome was really one among many towns of Latium. It is
to be noted that this was the war in which she learnt the new
system of fighting whereby she was fated to conquer the
world. Hitherto in ancient warfare a battle array had meant
a solid line in which the men stood shoulder to shoulder in
several ranks, pressing on with spear and shield against a
similar line of the enemy. It was largely a question of
weight in the impact. You tried to make your line deep
enough to prevent yielding and long enough to envelop the
enemy's flank : once you could turn or break the enemy's
line victory was yours. But the Romans, either because
they were often outnumbered on the field of battle, or, as
some say, in fighting the Gallic warriors with their long
swords, found it necessary to fight not shoulder to shoulder
but in open order — not in a solid phalanx but in open
companies or "maniples." This had afar-reaching effect : it
made every Roman soldier a self-reliant unit, who could fence
skilfully with his favourite weapon, the sword, instead of merely
pushing a long pike as his neighbours did. It is clear that only
an army of natural soldiers could have adopted such an in-
novation successfully. Once established, it made the Roman
soldier invincible. The maniple of 200 men was not only far
more mobile than a solid phalanx, but it covered a length of
ground equal to that of three times its own numbers. Formerly
only the front rank — the principes — had required a full suit of
armour and it was only the richest who could afford it. Now
the whole army had to be properly equipped, and this reacted
upon the social and political system of the city.
29
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
THE CONSTITUTION
In ancient times a man's rights as citizen depended entirely
upon his duties as a soldier. The comittum was the army,
and the preponderance of voting power went to the rich who
could afford a panoply. Now the soldiers were equalised
and therefore the citizens claimed equality. We cannot put
much faith in Livy's story of the struggle between the two
orders for political equality ; the details, which include
elaborate reports of the speeches delivered, are clearly free
compositions based upon much later controversies between the
republicans and democrats of Livy's own earlier days. There
is a great deal of confusion and contradiction in the accounts
of the various legislative measures by which the plebeians
were gradually admitted to equality with the patricians. But
the story of the Secession of the Plebs — there are two such
stories, but probably that is the result of duplication — is so
distinctive and peculiarly Roman that it scarcely seems like
an invention. To put it shortly, the plebeians won their
rights by means of that very modern weapon — a strike.
Being refused the rights for which they were agitating, they
refused to join the citizen levy, but marched out under arms
to the neighbouring Sacred Mount, and threatened to set up
a new Rome of their own there. The political instinct was
healthy and strong among them : the plebeians formed them-
selves into a second corporation organised like the patricians.
Where the patricians had their two consuls with two praetors
under them, the plebeians had their two tribunes and two
aediles. Where the patrician army had its comitium meeting
in groups called "curies," the plebeians had their assembly
•^meeting in tribes. So the new magistracies and the new
meetings became part and parcel of the Roman republic.
The tribunes were protected not so much by laws as by an
oath : their persons were declared sacred, and they had the
right to thrust their sacred persons between the plebeian
offender and the consul's lictor who came to arrest him, thus
30
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
expressing the ultimate sovereignty of the army of Roman
citizens. That is, in broad outline, how the story of political
equality at Rome has come down to us. But it must not be
supposed that even now the Roman republic was in anything
but externals like the Greek democracy. The Roman comitia
never debated like the Athenian ecclesia. They assembled
to listen to such speeches as the magistrates or their invited
friends might choose to make upon topics which had pre-
viously been selected, discussed and decreed by the senate ;
they were there to ratify the senate's decisions with " Yes "
or " No." Even then they did not vote as individuals ; each
" century," each " cury," or each " tribe," according to the form
of meeting summoned, was a single voting unit. Everything
in the system tended to put real power into the hands of the
executive. When you get the executive able to control
policy you get efficiency, but if you want liberty you must
adopt other means. The senate at Rome gradually came to
consist entirely of retired magistrates, and so to exhibit all
the knowledge, competence, experience, and bigoted self-con-
fidence which we expect from retired functionaries.
The republican constitution had invented two devices to
save itself from tyranny, and, according to tradition, had
invented them at the very beginning of republicanism. One
was the collegial system by which every magistracy was held
in commission by two or more colleagues. There were two
consuls from the first, sharing between them most of the
royal prerogatives, heads of the executive in peace and
supreme generals in war, with power of life and death, or full
imperium, at any rate on the field of battle. There was at
first only one praetor, for he was then merely the consuls'
lieutenant in time of war ; but when, as soon happened, the
praetor became a judge in time of peace, that office, too, was
given to a pair of colleagues. There were, it is said, at
first two tribunes of the plebs, principally charged with the
protection and leadership of their own order ; but as the city
grew their numbers were increased to ten. So there were
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
two sediles, who principally looked after affairs of police in
the city. There were two censors, ranking highest of all in
the hierarchy of office because their sphere was so largely
connected with religion. Their duty was to number the
people and to expiate that insult to heaven with a solemn rite
of purification. In numbering they also had to assess every
man's property for the purpose of fixing his rank in the army
and in the state. All these magistrates had powers of juris-
diction in various spheres. All the priests and prophets, too,
of whom there were many varieties, were formed into colleges.
Only the pontifex maximus stood alone without a colleague
— and he had an official wife. We are too familiar with the
working of " boards " and " commissions " to misunderstand
the purpose of this system. Theory required unanimity in
each board ; each member of it had power to stop action by
the others, one powerful weapon to that end being the reli-
gious system whereby nothing could be attempted without
favourable omens. You had only to announce unpropitious
auspices to stop any action whatever.
The other great check against official tyranny was the
system of annual tenure. All magistrates, except the censors,
who had a lengthy task before them and therefore held office
for five years, were annual. While this was some safeguard
for liberty, it told heavily against efficiency, especially in the
case of military leadership by the consuls. It also meant the
gradual creation of a great number of office-holders, past and
present. It was not quite so effective as the corresponding
Athenian system of balloting for office in checking personal
eminence, but it certainly succeeded in putting a great
number of nonentities and failures into high office — even the
supreme command of the legions.
THE EARLY ROMAN
It is only very dimly that we can trace the outlines of
public history as Rome grew to be a power in Italy. We
can scarcely hope to trace the lineaments of the individual
32
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
Roman even in outline. It is sometimes said that even if the
earliest history of the city is admitted to be apocryphal, we
can draw valuable deductions as to the Roman character
from the sort of actions which were regarded as praise-
worthy in the earliest times. There is some truth in
that view, though it might be objected that most of these
stories took literary shape only in the second and first cen-
turies B.C. It might be added that men often admire qualities
just because they feel that they themselves cannot claim them.
But, on the whole, I think we can get from this period
of legendary history some insight into Roman character.
There is a remarkable difference between the Roman
hero and the Greek. Greek mythology busies itself very
largely with stories of cleverness — how Heracles outwitted
his foes, smart Equivoques by the oracles, ingenious devices of
Themistocles, wise sayings of Thales and Solon. It is
mainly the intellectual virtues that Greek history of the
borderland admires. But the Roman of the same historical
area is not clever. Most of the old Roman stories are in
praise of courage — for example, the contempt of pain shown
by Scaevola, who held his right hand in the flames to demon-
strate Roman fortitude ; the courage of the maiden Clcelia,
who swam the river, or of Horatius, who held the bridge
against an army; the devotion to his country of Quintus
Curtius, who leapt in full armour into the chasm which had
opened in the Forum. Many of them celebrate the true
Roman virtue of sternness and austere devotion to law, as
when the Roman fathers condemned their sons to death for
breaking the law under most excusable circumstances. The
love of liberty is extolled in Brutus, the love of equality in
Valerius and Cincinnatus, called from the plough-tail to
supreme command. Austere chastity in females and the
strict demand for it in their proprietors is praised in the
stories of Lucretia and Virginia. All these we may well set
down as the virtues admired and, we hope, practised in early
Rome ; they form a consistent and quite distinctive picture.
c 33
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
But the early Roman had few accomplishments to embel-
lish his virtues. Art and civilisation either did not exist or
have perished without leaving any traces. It is likely enough
that all the city's energies were occupied with the one busi
ness of fighting. Some hints of civilising reform hang about
the name of Appius Claudius, who was censor about 318-
312 B.C. In his time we date some of the military changes
mentioned above, and they seem to have accompanied
economic changes which point to growing wealth at Rome.
Copper gave place to silver as the standard of exchange, and
therewith the copper as depreciated in value, so that the
Roman unit of historical times, the sestertius of 2\ as value,
was a coin worth about 2,d, Land was no longer the sole
basis of property ; it became possible for a man to become
rich by trade, and accordingly landless citizens were now
drafted into the ancient tribes for the first time. To this
great censor also belongs the first of the famous Roman
military roads, the Appian Way, which led southwards to the
Greek cities of Campania. Even to-day the Via Appia,
flanked with its ruined tombs — for the Romans often buried
their dead along the highways — running like a dart across
the barren Campagna, is one of the most striking spectacles
which modern Rome has to offer.*
Of anything which can be dignified with the name of
literature we have scarcely a relic. What there is seems
ludicrously rustic and uncouth. Consider, for an example,
the ancient hymn of the Salii, the jumping priests of Mars.
There were twelve of them, all men of patrician family ;
they dressed in embroidered tunics, with the striped toga, a
breastplate of bronze, a conical cap with a spike ; they carried
each a sacred shield, and as they made their annual proces-
sions through the city at the beginning of each campaigning
year, they leaped into the air and thumped their shields
with sticks ; trumpeters preceded them, and they sang this
ghostly chant :
* Plate §.'"
34
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
ENDS LASES IVVATE (ter)
NEVE LVE RVE MARMAR SINS INCVRRERE IN PLEBES (ter)
SATVR FV FERE MARS . LIMEN SALI . STA. BERBER (ter]
SEMVNIS ALTERNEI ADVOCAPIT CONCTOS. (ter)
ENOS MARMOR IVVATO (ter)
TRIVMPE (quinquies)
which is probably to be translated :
Help us, O Lares (thrice)
And, O Mars, let not plague or ruin attack our
people (thrice)
Be content, fierce Mars. Leap the threshold. Halt.
Strike (thrice)
In alternate strain call upon all the heroes, (thrice)
Help us, Mars (thrice)
Leap (jive times).
EARLY RELIGION
In our quest for the essential Roman we shall find nothing
more illuminating than religion. With some people culture
takes the place of religion, but it is far commoner to find
religion taking the place of culture: it did so with the
Hebrews, and it does so to a great extent among the
English. The Romans were never a really religious people.
Probably they lacked the imagination to be really devout.
They had scarcely any native mythology. But they were
ritualists and formalists to the heart's core. If those Salii
had jumped only four times at the word " Triumpe," the
whole value of the rite would have been lost : if no worse
thing befell them they would have had to begin again from the
beginning. Thus religion, always conservative, and generally
the richest hunting-ground for the antiquarian in search of
prehistoric history, is almost our only source of information
as to the mind of the early Roman. Of course, Roman
religion is so deeply overlaid with Greek mythology that it
takes some digging to discover the real gods of old Rome.
But that is being done by the patience and insight of such
scholars as Mr. Warde Fowler and Dr. J. G. Frazer, so that
33
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
we now have a good deal of information about the original
Roman religion.
Mr. Warde Fowler makes two important conclusions
about the early Romans from his study of the twofold
character of Mars, who, in spite of the later primacy of
Jupiter, is undoubtedly the true Roman male god: "(i) that
their life and habits of thought were those of an agricultural
race, and (2) that they continually increased their cultivable
land by taking forcible possession in war of that of their
neighbours." This was the Roman method of making agri-
culture pay. The spring of the year and the month which
still bears the name of Mars was not only the season of
returning life to nature, but it was also the time when the
god and his worshippers buckled on their armour to seek
fresh ploughlands, just as did the primitive Germans. It was
Europe's first method of extensive farming, and the habit
clung to the Romans long after they had ceased to be farmers.
In the spring it was time to look about you and consider where
and with whom you should begin to fight this year.
Some of these old Roman festivals are worth a brief
description, for they and they alone are the authentic history
of the early Romans. For example, on the Ides of March
the lower classes streamed out to the Campus Martius on the
banks of the river and spent the day in rustic jollity with wine
and song in honour of Anna Perenna — the recurring year.
On another day there was a ceremony like that of the Hebrew
scapegoat. Two dates in the calendar are marked for the
king to dissolve the comitia. The assembly had to be sum-
moned by the blast of special trumpets of peculiar un-Italian
shape (some say Etruscan), and the trumpets had to be purified
by a special service on the previous day. Although the
Romans abolished their political kingship, religion required
the retention of the title for numerous ceremonial purposes.
Then there were the Parilia in honour of the old shepherd
god Pales, when sheepfolds were garlanded with green, the
sheep were purified at the dawn, and rustic sacrifices were
36
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
paid to avert the wrath of the deity in case you had unwit-
tingly disturbed one of the mysterious powers who dwell in
the country — the nymphs and fauns of pool and spring and
tree. There was a prayer to this effect of which Ovid has
given us the substance, and "this prayer," adds Mr. Warde
Fowler, " must be said four times over, the shepherd looking
to the east, and wetting his hands with the morning dew.
The position, the holy water, and the prayer in its substance,
though now addressed to the Virgin, have all descended to
the Catholic shepherds of the Campagna." There were other
primitive agricultural deities, such as Robigus (the red rust
on the corn), on whose festival you sacrificed red puppies ;
Terminus (the boundary god), to whom you slaughtered a
sucking-pig on the boundary stone ; or Ops Consiva, the deity
who protected your buried store of corn. Such names and
their attributes indicate a certain poverty of religious imagi-
nation. There were more abstract, or, rather, less tangible
powers, such as Lares, the spirits of the dead ancestors who
figured as guardian angels of the home ; the Penates, the
spirits who watched over the store-cupboard ; the Genius, a
man's luck ; the Manes, the kindly dead ; or the Lemures,
dangerous ghosts of the unburied. The house, like the fields,
was full of unseen presences to be appeased with appropriate
ritual, which had to be most punctiliously performed. Every
year at the Lemuria the master of the house would rise at
midnight and, with clean hands and bare feet, walk through
the house, making a special sign with his fingers and thumbs
to keep off the ghosts. He fills his mouth with black beans
and spits them out as he goes, carefully keeping his eyes
averted, and saying, " With these I redeem me and mine.
Nine times he speaks these words without looking round, and
the ghosts come behind him unseen to gather up the beans.
Then the father washes himself again, and clashes the pots
together to frighten the spirits away. When he has repeated
the words " Depart, ye kindly spirits of our ancestors " nine
times, he looks round at last and the ceremony is complete.
37
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
The history of Rome, as Mr. Warde Fowler discerns it in
religion, begins with an extremely simple rustic worship of
natural forms, meteoric stones, sacred trees and animals such
as the Mother Wolf or Mars' woodpeckers ; to this stage
belong many of the curious spells and charms against ghosts.
This sort of worship is not distinctively Roman, but common
to the greater part of Central Europe. From these savage
local cults we pass to the more centralised worship which
belongs to the household, and that household an agricultural
one. The father is the priest, and his principal deity is Janus,
the god of the doorway ; his sons are the subordinate flamines ;
and his daughters have special charge of Vesta, who presides
over the family hearth-fire. Their agricultural activities are
reflected in the more orderly rural ceremonies in honour of
Saturn, Ops, and Vesta. Thirdly, we have a series of cults
which indicate the beginnings of a community with the king
for chief priest, supported by State Vestals and flamines.
The Latin Festival marks the participation of Rome in the
Latin League, whose presiding deity was Jupiter. In these
three stages it is mainly an affair of formless powers or
"numina," deities very scantily realised, with little or no
personality, scarcely to be termed anthropomorphic at all.
Instead of temples there was nothing but altars, chapels,
groves.
If we view these changes in the light of ethnology we
shall probably agree that the first of them is the common
ground of prehistoric Mediterranean worship. It is what
we find in Crete at the earliest period. But we have come
to regard the strict monogamous patriarchal family as
especially the contribution of the north to the civilisation of
Europe. Unfortunately those deities who are most certainly
plebeian, such as Ceres, Flora, and Diana, do not seem to
belong to the earlier strata of religion.
However that may be, it seems that we can trace in the
next succeeding stage a period of public worship connected
with clearly anthropomorphic deities who have temples,
38
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
priests, and probably images of their own. Towards the end
of the monarchic period we find those distinctly Etruscan
characteristics of which I have already spoken. Jupiter, Juno,
and Minerva are an Etruscan trinity. -Now begins the pre-
eminence of greater gods more or less personified and closely
resembling those of the Greeks — such as Mercury, Ceres,
and Diana. It is now that the important priestly colleges,
pontifices, and augurs are founded, largely replacing, as being
more important politically, the old agricultural brotherhood of
the Fratres Arvales and the martial fraternity of the Salii.
Thus in religion as in art the Romans were prepared by
their Etruscan connections for their subsequent capture by
Greek civilisation. It was inevitable that a Greek should
recognise Diana as Artemis, Minerva as Pallas, Mercury as
Hermes, and Juno as Hera. It was equally inevitable that
the Romans should be willing to clothe these bare and chilly
abstractions with the charming fabric of Greek mythology.
That process, and the simultaneous reception at Rome of
Oriental cults, form still later stages in the progress of that
strange medley which passed in the Rome of literature for
religion.
There is little to elevate or inspire in Roman religion. The
only virtue belonging to it was reverence and the strict sense
of duty which a Roman called pietas, explaining it as "justice
towards the gods." " Religion " meant " binding obligation "
to the Romans ; its source was fear of the unseen, its issue
was mainly punctilious formalism. No doubt the gods would
punish disrespect to a parent or rebellion against the state,
no doubt a fugitive or a slave had altars and sanctuaries
where he might claim mercy ; but there is little more than
that to connect virtue with religion at Rome. On the other
hand, we are not to suppose that when the lascivious rites of
Isis and Ashtaroth or the Paphian Venus came to Rome in
later days they came to corrupt a race of pious puritans.
True Roman deities like Flora, Fortuna Virilis, and Anna
Perenna had a native bestiality of their own. The simple
39
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
rustic is seldom a natural puritan, and we must beware of
idealising our Early Roman as a Scottish Covenanter. There
was savage cruelty in many of the early rites, such as the Ver
Sacrum when all the offspring of men and cattle within a
specified period was devoted to the gods, or the Fordicidia
when unborn calves were burnt. Human sacrifice looms
large in the early religion, and it was probably only a later
refinement which limited it to criminals or volunteers.
Mommsen has drawn our attention to the business-like
relation between worshipper and god, for that is also typical
of the old Roman character. "The gods," he says, "con-
fronted man just as a creditor confronted a debtor. . . . Man
even dealt in speculation with his god : a vow was in reality
as in name a formal contract between the god and the man
by which the latter promised to the former for a certain
service to be rendered a certain equivalent return." Nay,
he might venture to defraud his god. " They presented to
the lord of the sky heads of onions or poppies, that he might
launch his lightnings at these rather than at the heads of
,-nen. In payment of the offering annually demanded by
father Tiber, thirty puppets plaited of rushes were annually
thrown into the stream." It may be true, as Mr. Warde
Fowler argues, that the bargain sometimes took the form of a
lively sense of favours to come, but a votum was essentially
a business transaction.
The deity was very dimly visualised : the cult was every-
thing, the god nothing. The true Latin god does not marry
or beget children — did not, at least, till the Greek theologians
came over and married them all suitably and provided them
with families. Before history began the Romans had for-
gotten the little they had ever known about their most ancient
deities. The rite, perhaps the altar, was preserved, but no
one remembered the object of it. This is a typical Roman
prayer as we have it in old Cato : " This is the proper Roman
way to cut down a grove. Sacrifice with a pig for a peace-
offering. This is the verbal formula : Whether thou art a
40
—
OH
/
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
god or a goddess to whom that grove is sacred, may it be
justice in thine eyes to sacrifice a pig for a peace-offering in
order that the sanctity may be restrained. For this cause,
whether I perform the sacrifice or any one else at my orders,
may it be rightly done. For that cause in sacrificing this pig
for a peace-offering I pray thee honest prayers that thou mayest
be kind and propitious to me and my house and my slaves and
my children. For these causes be thou blessed with the
sacrifice of this pig for a peace-offering." To misplace a
word in this formula would have been fatal. The vagueness
of the address is typical : the wood is sacred, no doubt, to
some invisible numen; the woodman must guard himself
against addressing the wrong power. Much of the Roman
worship is thus offered "to the Unknown God."
LAW
It was this quality of precision and formalism which madex
Rome the lawgiver of Europe. In the battle between law
and sentiment the Roman sword has been thrown with
decisive effect into the scale of law. All Roman law was
originally a series of formulae, and like all ancient law a part
of religion. First the king and then the priests were the
only people who knew these formulae. Thus the king \vas,
the sole judge both in private and public right ; he might
summon a council of advisers or he might delegate his powers
to an inferior officer, such as the praetor or the prefect of the
city, or the trackers of murder. Both these rights, that of
choosing a consilium and of delegating authority, with, how-
ever, a right of appeal from the lower to the higher functionary,
remained inherent in the Roman magistracy. In all cases,
private or public, the king or the magistrate who replaced
him had to pronounce the/z« first : that is, to state the proper
formula for the case in question ; then he would send the
case for trial of fact, or judicium, before judge or jury. The
formula would run " if it appears that A. B. has been guilty of
condemn him to ; if not, acquit him." Jus, human
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
right, was inseparably connected with fas, divine right : no
layman could properly interpret either. For a long time it
was necessary for one of the priests to be present in court to
see that the proper formularies of action were observed with
strict verbal accuracy. This was, of course, an enormously
powerful weapon in the hands of the patricians.
Then in the course of the struggle between the orders
came the usual demand for written laws. The famous story
of the Decemviri and their commission to Athens in 451 B.C.
is unfortunately very dubious history. It is full of romantic
elements, it is part of that systematic depreciation of the
Claudii in Roman history which Mommsen has traced to its
probable source, it has elements which look as if they were
borrowed from the story of the thirty tyrants at Athens, and
there is no confirmation from the Athenian side. Professor
Pais believes that the fifth century is much too early for such
a code. There are, it is true, in the fragments of the Twelve
Tables which have come down to us, some enactments closely
resembling those of the Greek codes — regulations, for example,
limiting the expense of funerals — but we find such laws in
other codes than that of Solon. One would like to have
fuller details about that later Appius Claudius, the famous
censor of 312 B.C. It is said that he desired to reduce the
now complicated bulk of legal formulae to writing simply for
the benefit of the priests, but that a low-born scribe, one
Flavius, whom he employed for the purpose as his clerk,
fraudulently revealed these judicial secrets to the public. The
whole tendency of the Claudian falsifications is to make out
that the Claudii were tyrannical and anti-democratic. It
certainly looks as if the dishonesty of the freedman had been
put into the story for the purpose of robbing the famous
censor of his credit for helping the people to a knowledge
of law.
The whole fabric of Roman law was supposed to rest upon
the foundation of the Twelve Tables. Only fragments of
them have come down to us. They are undoubtedly very
42
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
ancient and primitive, more so, it would seem, than the
Athenian law of 451 B.C. Fines are to be paid in metal by
weight. A creditor has the right to carve up the body of his
debtor. Plebeian may not intermarry with patrician. But
they also carried something of a charter of liberties for the
citizens in that capital punishment could not be inflicted
without right of appeal to the assembly, and no law could
be proposed against an individual. The language of this
famous code is of a rugged simplicity and directness that
is truly Roman. On the whole Roman law is merciful, con-
sidering its strict character : though much of Roman pleading,
as we have it in the mouth of Cicero, is full of appeals to
sentiment, Roman law itself allows no appeal to anything so
vague as abstract justice. The written letter stands, and
there can be no pleading without a legal formula.
The character of the ancient Roman is best described by
his favourite virtue of gravitas. In that word is implied
serious purpose, dignified- reserve, fidelity to one's promise,
and a sense of duty. Levity is its opposite, and among the
things repugnant to true Roman gravity were art, music, and
literature. It is on the battlefield, in the senate-house, and
the law-courts that the old Roman is most truly at home.
43
II
CONQUEST
qua neque Dardaniis campis potuere perire
nee quom capta capi, nee quom combusta cremari,
augusto augurio postquam incluta condita Roma est.
ENNIUS.
HE great Samnite wars, which had
lasted on and off from 343 to 290
B.C., had been the school of Roman
valour. In her citizen legions
Rome had evolved a fighting
machine unequalled, probably, until
the Musketeers of Louis XIV.
and Marlborough. Also she was
learning politics and the art
of government. She was now
mistress over the greater part of
Italy ; all, in fact, except the Gallic plain in the north and
the Greek cities of the south. The Pyrrhic war which followed
after a short breathing-space forms the transition between
domestic expansion and foreign conquest. Our business here
is not with wars and battles for their own sake, but it will be
important to observe in what manner Rome was launched on
her career of empire-making. Seeley has shown how the
British Empire grew up in a haphazard manner, without any
wise policy to direct its growth, with continual neglect of
opportunities, and often in contemptuous ignorance of the
work that private citizens were undertaking for its honour
and advancement. We shall see that it was very much the
44
CONQUEST
same with the Roman Empire. One responsibility leads to
another, one conquest leads to many entanglements : if the
coast is to be held the hinterland must be conquered. Thus
power follows capacity, and the doctrine which seems so
unjust, " To him that hath shall be given, from him that hath
not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have,"
is fulfilled in all the dealings between Providence and imperial
peoples. By coming into contact with the Greeks of the
south Rome was brought definitely to deal with a superior
but declining civilisation. The career of Agathocles, the
brigand tyrant of Sicily, had lately shown how easy a thing it
was to make empires among the opulent and luxurious cities
of the Calabrian and Bruttian shores.
One summer's day in 282 B.C. the people of Tarentum
were seated in their open-air theatre, watching the per-
formance of a tragedy. They looked out above the stage
over the blue waters of the Gulf of Calabria, and there they
saw a small detachment of the Roman fleet sailing into their
harbour. The ships were on a voyage entirely peaceful, but
there was an old treaty forbidding the Romans to pass the
Lacinian Promontory, and these barbarians had lately been
interfering in the affairs of their Greek neighbours, always in
favour of oligarchy against democracy. The mob was seized
with a sudden access of fury ; they rushed down to the
harbour, butchered or enslaved the sailors, and put the
admiral to death. The Roman Senate met this atrocious
insult with calm, even with generosity. But the Tarentine
mob would have no peace. Looking abroad for a champion
they invited the Prince of Epirus to their aid. Pyrrhus was j
a young man of charm, ability, and ambition almost equal to \
that of Alexander the Great, whose career he longed to l
emulate in the West. He was called the first general of his
day, and he brought with him 20,000 infantrymen of the
phalanx, 2000 archers, 500 slingers, and 3000 cavalry. More-
over he had twenty Indian war elephants. The boastful
Greeks had offered to provide 350,000 infantry, but when it
45
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
came to the point they would do nothing but hire a few
mercenaries. However, Pyrrhus was victorious in the first
battle near Heraclea. The victory was won, it is said, by the
final charge of the elephants. The simple Romans had never
seen an elephant before; they called them "snake-hands"
and " Lucanian cows," and their horses were even more
alarmed than they. But the next time the Romans had to
meet elephants they provided themselves first with wonderful
machines, in which chariots were mysteriously blended with
chafing-dishes, and then when these failed, with fiery darts,
which converted this heavy cavalry into engines of destruction
for their owners. That is rather typical of the simple Roman
and his way of encountering monsters.
After the victory of Heraclea, Pyrrhus sent to Rome with
overtures of peace a smooth-tongued courtier named Cineas,
who was much impressed with the incorruptibility of the
political chiefs and their wives. It was he who described the
Senate as a " council of kings," so grave and majestic was
their bearing and discourse. Nevertheless the Roman Senate
would have made terms if it had not been for the great Censor
Appius Claudius, now blind and infirm, who laid down for the
first time the celebrated doctrine that Rome never listened to
terms while there were foreign troops on Italian soil. There-
fore, although the Romans had lost 15,000 men, fresh
conscripts eagerly enrolled themselves to make a new army.
Meanwhile Pyrrhus, after another incomplete "Pyrrhic"
victory, was proceeding unchecked over the island of Sicily.
There he drove the Carthaginians from point to point until
they concentrated in their great stronghold of Lilybaeum in
the west. But all the time his position was desperate. The
coalition on which he depended was composed of faithless and
useless allies. While his stiff Epirot phalanx was depleted at
every victory, fresh levies of Roman citizens seemed to spring
from the soil to replace the losses of every defeat. So at
length it came to the battle of the Arusine Plain, near
Beneventum, in which the Romans were completely victorious.
46
CONQUEST
Thus Pyrrhus leaves to history the reputation not of a con-
queror but of an adventurer. The Romans had thus faced
and overthrown the Greek phalanx at its best, and were now
masters of Italy from Genoa to Reggio, with Sicily obviously
inviting their next advance. That Rome was now formally
accepted among the great powers of the Mediterranean world
is shown by an embassy offering alliance with Ptolemy of
Egypt.
She had a breathing-space of eleven years before the first
of her two great conflicts with the Carthaginians. Carthage,
a colony of the Phoenicians of Tyre, had grown rich and pro-
sperous on the fertile soil of the modern Tunis. She was an
aristocracy wholly devoted to trade, and living uncomfortably
amid a surrounding population of dangerous native subjects.
War was not her main business, but when she sought fresh
markets she was apt to fight with horrible ferocity, sacrificing
her prisoners in hundreds to hideous gods when she was
victorious, and impaling her generals when she was not. As
a military power she varied greatly : the comparatively puny
Greek states of Sicily had been maintaining a fairly equal
struggle against her for centuries. But she used the British
system of sepoy troops, and thus everything depended on the
general. Had it not been for the inexperience of the Romans
at sea and the extraordinary genius of Hannibal, Carthage
would never ri^ve come as near victory as she did. We
have no history of the struggle from the Punic side, and
Carthage herself must remain somewhat of a mystery even
when illuminated by the brilliant imagination of the author of
SalammbS.
In entering upon this war, which Rome did ostensibly in
response to an appeal from a parcel of ruffianly outlaws for
whom she had no sympathy whatever, we can for once dis-
cover no motive but desire of conquest. Messina, the home of
the said ruffians, was for her merely the t£te du pont which
led from Bruttium into Sicily. The conquest of that rich Greek
island was plainly the objective, but she plunged into war
47
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
without foreseeing the immensity of her undertaking. The
chief interest of the First Punic War, which lasted from 264
to 241, lies in the creation of a Roman navy which occurred
in the course of it. Although we may agree with Mommsen
that "it is only a childish view to believe that the Romans
then for the first time dipped their oars in water," yet tradi-
tion says that the Romans constructed a fleet in a great
hurry, taking for model a stranded Carthaginian galley. It
was at any rate her first war-fleet worth mentioning. The
tradition is proved by the lack of seamanship displayed by the
Romans, for every storm cost her enormous losses by ship-
wreck. The device by which she overcame the Punic ships
— a sort of grappling gangway on pulleys affixed to her
masts, so that her soldiers could fight the enemy as if on
shore — was a successful but essentially a landlubberly inven-
tion, and no doubt accounts for many of her losses by ship-
wreck. Her annual consuls, transformed for the occasion
into annual admirals, had not even as much opportunity as
Colonel Blake to learn their trade. And, though Rome
launched fleet after fleet until at length she became mistress
of the seas, she never treated her navy with respect. The
ships were rowed by slaves and manned chiefly by subject
allies, but the real business of fighting was done by the 120
legionaries on each vessel, who came into action when the
enemy was grappled and the gangway fast in her deck. So
the war dragged on for nearly a generation until at length
the Carthaginians made peace, and Rome gained the coveted
island. Britain is not the only empire in history which wins
victories by "muddling through."
The peace was clearly nothing more than a respite : the
command of the Western Mediterranean was not yet settled.
Rome spent the interval in making fresh conquests. First
she seized the opportunity, while Carthage was involved
with her native rebels, to annex the islands of Sardinia and
Corsica, alleging with more ingenuity than geographical
exactitude that these were some of the islands between Sicily
48
CONQUEST
and Africa which Carthage had agreed to surrender. Here
we behold the simple Roman as a diplomat. Then she
was compelled to intervene in Illyria in order to clear
the Adriatic of piracy, and so acquired territory across the
water. Soon afterwards the Gauls of the northern plain
began under pressure from their kinsmen across the Alps to
threaten invasion ; and Rome, after failing to gain the favour
of heaven by the pious expedient of burying a male and
female Gaul alive in her Forum, marched out to meet them,
slaughtered them in thousands, and thus rounded off her
control over the peninsula. Much of this looks like conscious
empire-building.
In the Second Punic War, which lasted from 218 to
the end of the century, Rome was not the aggressor. At
Carthage by this time the native rebellion had been put
down with a heavy hand. It seems that Carthage had its party
system, the democracy, as usual in ancient cities, being for
war, and the aristocracy of rich merchants for peace. The
democracy was led by the celebrated Barca family, who had
long supplied the state with famous generals and now
occupied a position of unrivalled eminence. Constitutional!)
a Carthaginian could rise no further than to be one of the
two shophets who corresponded to the Roman consuls, but
actually the Barcas were more like a family of dictators.
From the first Hamilcar Barca foresaw that Rome was still
the enemy, and he is said to have made his little son Hannibal
swear an oath at the altar that he would prosecute that enmity
to the death. But first it was necessary to acquire resources
and an army for the purpose. This he resolved to do, as
Julius Ccesar did after him, by foreign conquest. Without
orders from home he led his army into Spain, and there began
to build up a province and a native army under his absolute
control. Though Cadiz was already a Carthaginian market
and there was already a Greek colony at Saguntum, and the
ships of Tarshish were known even to King Solomon, this
is the first real appearance of Spain in history. There was
D 49
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
metal to be had from the mines, gold, copper, and silver, and
there were hardy warriors in the hills who only needed train-
ing to become excellent soldiers. So Carthage began to
acquire a western substitute for her lost province of Sicily.
Hamilcar died ; his son-in-law, Hasdrubal, was assassinated ;
and then the army chose for its leader Hamilcar's son
Hannibal, then a young man of twenty-nine.
This man, though his history was written exclusively by
his enemies, stands out as one of the greatest leaders in
history. In strategy he was supreme ; in statesmanship he
had the gift which Maryborough shared of being able by his
personal influence to hold unwilling allies together even in
adverse circumstances. He was a cultivated man who spoke
and wrote Greek and Latin. He is charged by the jealousy
of the Romans with cruelty and perfidy, but in fact history
has nothing to substantiate these charges : on the contrary
his actions are often magnanimous and honourable. His
brilliance as a general largelysprang from his power of entering
into the mind of his enemy. This was the man who inherited
his father's deep-laid plans of vengeance, and set out, his heart
burning with hatred of Rome, to fulfil them.
We cannot dwell upon his wonderful march over the
Alps and his brilliant series of victories on the soil of Italy.
Hannibal's whole plan of campaign was, briefly, to invade
Italy by land with a compact striking force and raise the
unwilling subjects of Rome against her, while the main force
of Carthage attacked Sicily and Italy by sea. But it contained
three serious miscalculations which brought it eventually to
ruin. First, the southern Gauls on whom Hannibal relied for
his communications and his base proved fickle and untrust-
worthy allies ; secondly, he found that Rome's mild imperial
system had not produced unwilling subjects such as Carthage
possessed in Africa ; and thirdly, he hoped for support from
Philip of Macedon, but here he was foiled by Roman diplo-
macy. Moreover, while the Romans showed a tenacity and
power of recuperation unexampled in history, Carthage her-
50
a
•z
w
04
H
U
u:
a
£
CONQUEST
self, now in the hands of the commercial oligarchs, gave him
grudging and uncertain support. The firmness and courage
of the Roman senate and people were amazing. Beaten again
and again in the field at the Ticino, the Trebia, Lake
Trasimene, and Cannae, Rome never lost her pride. She
refused offers of help from King Hiero of Syracuse, she could
find time to order the Illyrian chiefs to pay their tribute, she
actually summoned Philip of Macedon to surrender her
fugitive rebel Demetrius. She kept an army in Spain ; a
fleet still cruised in Greek waters ; she had an army in Sicily,
while four legions besieged Capua ; she had troops in
Sardinia, three legions in North Italy, two legions as a
garrison in the capital — no fewer than 200,000 citizens under
arms. When the foolish demagogue Varro returned in defeat
and disgrace from the awful disaster at Cannae, the senate
thanked him for not having committed suicide — " for not
having despaired of the salvation of his country."
No doubt Rome owed something, but not as much as her
poets and orators pretended, to the cautious tactics of Quintus
Fabius. At any rate, he gave her time to grow used to the
presence of the invader and to recover from the shock of the
three disasters with which the war opened. The Romans
had never before been called upon to face a consummate
strategist. Pyrrhus had been, within the limitations of Greek
warfare, a clever tactician ; he had even shown the originality
to copy the Roman manipular system in his later battles.
But Hannibal was more than a strategist ; he was a psycholo-
gist who knew when the opposing general was rash and when
he was wary, who had spies everywhere and could supplement
their intelligence by disguising himself to do his own scout-
ing. Scouting was an art that the Romans had yet to learn
by bitter experience. At the Trasimene Lake* they blundered
straight into the most obvious of natural death-traps. But the
Romans were always good learners, and, as usually happens,
the amateur patriot army steadily improved during the war
* Plate 9.
51
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
while the hired professionals steadily deteriorated. The
actual strategy by which Hannibal won most of his battles
was simple enough. It was the policy of a long weak centre
into which the Roman legions buried themselves deep while
the two strong wings of the enemy closed round on their
flanks and rear. In his Numidian horsemen Hannibal had the
finest light cavalry yet known to European warfare.
For a time all went brilliantly for the invader. Italians,
Greeks, and Gauls joined his victorious standard. Rome was
on the brink of despair. The very gods began to tremble ;
their statues sweated blood, two-headed lambs were born with
alarming frequency, and cows in Apulia uttered prophetic
warnings with human voices ; the most horrible of omens
portended destruction. But the city and the senate never
lost heart and gradually as the years passed by Hannibal
began to see that his cause was lost. The Latin allies stood
firm for Rome. The Romans were able to hold Sicily and
even despatch a brilliant and lucky young general named
Scipio to reconquer Spain. Thus the longed-for reinforcements
were cut off. The stupid aristocracy of Carthage were jealous
of their great soldier, and when at last a reinforcing Punic
army from Spain managed to slip through into Italy, Nero
caught it at the River Metaurus just before the junction was
effected. The first news of that battle came to Hannibal when
the Romans tossed over the rampart into his camp the bleed-
ing head of the defeated general, his own brother Hasdrubal.
Horace has sung of this tragic episode in his noblest manner :
quid debeas, o Roma, Neronibus
testis Metaurum flumen et Hasdrubal
devictus et pulcer fugatis
ille dies Latio tenebris.
• • • • •
dixitque tandem perfidus Hannibal :
" cerui, luporum prseda rapacium,
sectamur ultro quos opimus
fallere et effugere est triumphus
• » * • •
52
CONQUEST
" Carthagini iam non ego nuntios
mittam superbos. occidit, occidit
spes omnis et fortuna nostri
nominis Hasdrubale interempto."*
This was in 207 : in 206 Scipio won a decisive victory in
Spain and in 205 made a counter-invasion upon the coast
of Carthage. It was only "a forlorn hope of volunteers and
disrated companies," but it caused the recall of Hannibal and
gained valuable African allies for Rome. The last scene of
the duel was the victory of Zama in 202 in which Scipio won
his title of Africanus and became the hero and saviour of
Rome.t Carthage ceded Spain and the Spanish islands, lost
her whole war-fleet, came under Roman suzerainty and
agreed to pay an enormous indemnity. But her end was
not yet. For another fifty years she was permitted to exist
on sufferance in humiliation and agony.
Now, frightful as had been the losses of Rome in this
seventeen-years' conflict, and great as was her exhaustion, she
proceeded in the very year following the peace with Carthage
to enter upon a fresh series of campaigns. The Gauls of the
north made a desperate revolt, sacked Piacenza and invested
Cremona, but the Romans quickly brought them to reason.
The Gauls could not, of course, receive any of the rights of
citizenship as yet, but they received back their independence,
and were left free of tribute to act as a bulwark against their
northern cousins. There was incessant fighting in Spain also.
In Sardinia there were perpetual slave-drives, until the
market was glutted with slaves, and the phrase was begotten
"as cheap as a Sardinian." How could the senate at such
* What thou owest to the stock of Nero, O Rome, let Metaurus' flood bear
witness, and the defeated Hasdrubal, and that fair dawn that drove the dark-
ness from Latium. . . . And at length spake treacherous Hannibal : " We are
but deer, the prey of ravening wolves, but lo 1 we are pursuing those whom
to escape is a rare triumph. ... No proud ambassadors now shall I send to
Carthage : perished, perished is all our hope and all the fortune of our race, for
Hasdrubal is dead." (Odes, IV. iv. 37-40, 49-52, 69-73).
t Plate ji,
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
a moment declare a fresh war with the greatest of European
powers ? Was it under pressure of that greedy commercial
party at Rome of which we are beginning to hear so much ?
The suggestion is absurd. There were hard knocks and little
money to be got from Macedon ; and it is difficult to conceive
how any powerful commercial interests could have arisen at
Rome during the seventeen years of the Hannibalic War. If
ever there was a nation whose early history declined the
economic interpretation it was the Romans. Even when the
Romans had conquered Macedon they shut down the famous
gold mines because they did not know how to manage them !
Nor, I think, was it any large-minded Welt-politik which led
Rome into the Second Macedonian War. Doubtless Philip
and the Greeks were dangerous and uncomfortable neigh-
bours, and no doubt it was true that Philip of Macedon and
Antiochus of Syria had formed a compact to divide up the
realms of the boy-king of Egypt. But the war could probably
have been postponed for years by negotiation. Philip did not
want to fight Rome : he had not even ventured to intervene
while she was almost prostrate before Hannibal. The fact is
that the Romans were by habits and instinct a fighting people.
From the earliest times they had inherited the custom of an
annual summer campaign. Peace did not present itself to
them, or most of their neighbours, as a desirable condition to
be preserved as long as possible. They were soldiers and
nought else, and what are soldiers for but for fighting? It is
only blind optimism which can believe that nations are even
now actuated habitually in their international relations by
foresight and policy. "The plain truth is," said William
James, "that people want war. They want it anyhow; for
itself, and apart from each and every possible consequence.
It is the final bouquet of life's fireworks." That is certainly
true of the Romans : the Roman state, as a whole, needed its
customary annual campaign. It was the business of her
statesmen and diplomats to choose the enemy and prepare a
casus belli. To imagine the states of 200 B.C. as always
54
CONQUEST
calculating their actions solely on the basis of commercial
interest must be unhistorical.
In their attack on Philip the Romans were allied with the
most respectable elements in Levantine politics : Rhodes,
the commercial republic ; Pergamum, the kingdom of the
cultivated Attalus ; Athens, the ancient home of art and
learning ; Egypt, the centre of commerce and literature.
Elsewhere * I have described how the simple Romans com-
ported themselves in this land of higher civilisation. They
trod almost reverently into the circle of Greek culture ; they
were flattered when the Athenians initiated them into the
Eleusinian Mysteries, or when the Achaean League permitted
them to take part in the Isthmian games. And when they
had beaten Philip — not without difficulty, nor without indis-
pensable aid from the ^Etolian cavalry — at Cynocephalae,
they made no attempt at annexation. Leaving Philip crippled,
they were content. Flamininus, their Philhellenic general,
was proud to proclaim the liberty of Greece before he retired.
He and many of his officers carried away with them an
ineffaceable impression. They were returning to barbarism
from a land rich in ancient temples of incredible splendour,
crowded with works of art. They had seen the tragedies in
the theatres, the runners in the games. They had heard the
philosophers disputing in the colonnades, the orators harangu-
ing in the market-place. A world glowing with life undreamt-
of, where there were other things to live for than battle, had
suddenly flashed upon their eyes.
The next great war was against Philip's accomplice,
Antiochus of Syria. This war was as inevitable as the
last. Antiochus, puffed up with the pretensions of an Oriental
King of Kings, was eager to match his strength against the
parvenus Romans. Rome seemed, and perhaps was, reluctant
to undertake the apparently enormous task at this moment,
though Pergamum and Rhodes invoked her assistance. One
strong cause for war was that Antiochus had given a home to
* See " The Glory that was Greece," p. 261.
55
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Hannibal, Rome's hunted but dreaded foe. If the Great
King had but had the sense to give Hannibal power over his
great host it might yet have gone hard with the Romans. As
it was, the battle of Magnesia (190) was one of those tame
victories in which Oriental hosts are butchered by superior
Western weapons and methods of fighting. But even with
the wealth of Syria spread out at her feet, Rome annexed
nothing ; not out of any spirit of self-denial, for she exacted
an indemnity of almost four million sterling, but because she
was not prepared to undertake the responsibility of governing
regions so vast and so much more civilised than herself.
Actually, of course, the effect of these wars was to give
Rome complete command of the Mediterranean coast-lands.
Though she did not annex, she accepted suzerainty ; that is,
she controlled, or attempted to control, foreign policy. Rome
is the patron ; Macedonia, Syria, Egypt, Pergamum, Rhodes,
Bithynia, Athens, the two leagues and all the ancient states
of Greece are her clients. The position of policeman and
nurse of the JEgean world had been thrust upon Rome because
she was strong and just. Even that was a terrific and bewil-
dering responsibility. Every day fresh embassies came to
Rome to complain of neighbours and solicit assistance — clever
Greeks who would talk your head off with sophistries, and
rich Asiatics who would corrupt you with bribes and blandish-
ments. There was no one within reach who would stand up
and fight squarely. In the West there were Provinces, in
the East allies ; it was difficult to know which gave most
trouble.
So we come to the next stage, when the Romans began to
annex and subjugate. It was the only way. In Macedonia,
after Philip had been conquered and pardoned, Perseus arose
and rebelled. After Perseus had been crushed and his king-
dom dismembered, a bastard pretender arose and headed a
revolt, joined by the Greeks. Obviously there was nothing
for it but to round off the business by sending a permanent
army under a permanent general to Macedonia, and to call it
56 '
PLATE X. BRONZE STATUE OF AULUS MET1LIUS
["THE AKRINGATORE"]
CONQUEST
his "province." Not even yet did the Romans dream of
making cities like Athens her subjects. These free cities,
however, needed a sharp lesson ; and Corinth, as an almost
impregnable fortress which had been a centre of Achaean
mischief, was selected for destruction and destroyed in
146 B.C.
In the same year came the end of Carthage. During the
last fifty years there had been incessant trouble there. Rome
had left Carthage prostrate before her dangerous African
enemies, and refused all her appeals to be allowed to defend
herself. All the time Carthage was undoubtedly recovering
financially from her defeat, in spite of her large annual tribute.
This sight moved the fears and jealousy of the Romans. It
was not sufficient to have ordered the expulsion of Hannibal.
The Romans who had grown up under the shadow of the
great Punic War had sucked in hate and fear of Carthage with
their mother's milk. Intelligent people like Scipio, who had
seen Carthage in the dust, might mock at their fears. It was
the Old Roman party, with their spokesman Cato and his
stupid parrot-cry of delenda est Carthago, who constantly
kept their nerves on edge, until at last in sheer panic they
obeyed. The long feud between Carthage and the Berber
chief Masinissa came to a head in 154. Masinissa appealed
to Rome, and Rome ordered Carthage to dismiss her army
and burn her fleet. Carthage, now desperate, refused, went
to war with Masinissa, and was beaten. Then Rome declared
war upon her — the Third Punic War. Two consuls landed
with a large army and Carthage offered submission. The
consuls demanded complete disarmament. Carthage sub-
mitted. Then the consuls demanded that the existing city
should be destroyed and the inhabitants settled ten miles
inland. That meant not only the destruction of their homes
and hearths and temples, but the end of the commerce for
which they lived. This preposterous demand shows that
Cato's policy had triumphed. Carthage could not submit to
this, and there followed one of those frightful sieges in which
57
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
the Semitic peoples show their amazing tenacity. Three
years it lasted, by favour of the gross incompetence of the
Roman generals ; until at last a Scipio came to turn the tide
once more. Carthage was destroyed utterly with fire and
sword, her very site laid bare, and the soil sown with salt, in
token that man should dwell there no more.
The destruction of these two cities, Corinth and Carthage,
together with other facts such as the unreasonable irritation
which Rome displayed against her Greek allies, Rhodes and
Pergamum, have been taken by some modern historians to
indicate, once more, a policy of commercial jealousy insti-
gating the destruction of rival markets. In the one case,
however, it has been proved that Corinth was no longer a
great centre of Greek commerce when she was destroyed,
and in the case of Carthage it was the party of Cato, who was
much more of a farmer than a company-promoter, that urged
destruction. A man of business might indeed be foolish
enough to want to close the principal markets which bought
and sold with him — there are such business men to-day — but
he would scarcely be so mad as to have a fine commercial
centre with its docks and quays utterly destroyed and cursed
for ever. Similarly, when Macedon was conquered her rich
gold mines were shut down by order of the senate. The
truth is that Rome was tired and exhausted with her colossal
wars, irritable and nervous beyond expression with the gigantic
task of government which she had found thrust upon her.
Surrounded with false friends and secret enemies, she was
losing the noble sang froid she had displayed in times of real
crisis. Corinth was destroyed as a warning to the Greeks,
Carthage as an expiation for the lemures of the unburied
Roman dead.
THE PROVINCES
In considering the ancient, imperial, and provincial
systems it is necessary for the modern to divest himself of all
the geographical notions which spring from the study of maps.
58
CONQUEST
The ancients probably had only the most vague notions of
territory. Natural frontiers such as mountains, rivers, and
coasts were of course familiar to them, from the strategic point
of view. Within those were cities great and small, which in
the case of civilised people formed the units of life and
government. In the case of barbarians there were tribes and
nations, seldom sufficiently settled to produce any notion of
geographical area. Thus when Rome conquered Sicily she
was acquiring not so much one geographical unit, an island,
as a collection of states of various types and constitutions.
Similarly in the case of Spain ; she said and thought that she
acquired Spain, although the greater part of the Iberian
peninsula remained unconquered for another century and
a half. To remember the limitations of ancient geographical
knowledge is essential to the understanding of the Roman
provincial system. Provincia means in the first instance a
sphere of official duty ; a man's provincia might be the feeding
of the sacred geese or it might be the control of an army.
It was not for a long time that the word came to connote a
territorial area. When it did so, the day of the city-state
was at an end.
The earliest Roman provinces were Sicily, acquired by
conquest in the First Punic War, 241 B.C., then Corsica and
Sardinia, annexed in the diplomatic intrigues which followed.
Spain, or rather "the Spams," Further and Hither, were
the fruit of the Second Punic War (201). After the Third
Punic War (146) the territory of Carthage became a province
under the name of Africa. At the same time the Mace-
donian Wars gave Rome the province of Macedonia. To
complete the list so far as the Roman Republic is concerned :
Attalus III. bequeathed his kingdom to Rome in 133, and
this became the province of Asia. In 121 the conquest of
Southern Gaul gave Rome Gallia Narbonensis. In 103 the
prevalence of piracy on the southern coasts of Asia Minor
compelled the Romans to make Cilicia a province. In 81 a
legislative act of Sulla brought the already conquered
59
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Cisalpine Gaul into the same category. The King of
Bithynia imitated Attalus in bequeathing his kingdom to
Rome. Cyrene also was bequeathed to Rome and united in
one province with Crete in 63. In 64 Pompeius the Great
deposed the King of Syria and annexed his kingdom.
About the same time, on the death of Mithradates, Pontus
was added to Bithynia as a united province. In 51 Julius
Caesar completed the conquest of Gaul and added it as
Gallia Comata to the old province of Narbonensian Gaul.
Finally in 31 Octavianus added Egypt to the list.
It was not the Roman way to think a situation out with
the logic and directness of a Greek or a Frenchman. More
like the Englishman, he took things as they came and made
the best of them with as little derangement as possible of his
pre-existing system and preconceived ideas. The Roman
Empire was not governed on a system as it was not acquired
by a policy. When Sicily came into the Roman hands, it
came piecemeal in the course of the war. Various cities
accepted Roman "alliance" on various terms. Rome had
never been able to grant full citizenship to Greek states,
because their inhabitants, speaking a foreign language, could
not give the equivalent in military service. If Sicily had
been Italian it would no doubt have entered the Roman
alliance as a collection of municipia ; as it was, the sixty-five
or so separate Sicilian states continued to enjoy for the most
part their previous constitutions under various agreements
with Rome. Some were "free," some were "free and con-
federate " ; similarly of kings who yielded to Rome, some
were styled " allies," some "allies and friends." The cities
would have their charters and the kings would have their
personal treaties with Rome which lapsed with their death.
But in a region conquered in war most of the tribes or states
were simply " stipendiary," that is, tribute-paying. The
stipendium paid was originally, and in theory, an indemnity
or a contribution for the maintenance of a military force by
people who were unqualified to give personal service. It was
60
CONQUEST
generally settled by a commission of ten members of the
senate, who went out to organise a newly acquired territory.
Even these tributary states had their charters from Rome.
The stipendium was by no means extortionate. In Mace-
donia, for example, the people only paid to Rome half as
much as they had previously paid to their kings. In Sicily
and Sardinia the tillers of the soil paid a tithe, generally in
kind (that is, in corn), to the Roman treasury, and the town-
dwellers probably paid a poll-tax. It was an error of the
jurists, who confused this tithe with the tenth paid by occu-
pants of Roman public land, which afterwards led to the
dangerous legal theory that Rome had acquired the whole
soil of the country conquered by her arms and leased it back
for a consideration to the original proprietors. As a matter
of fact, few of the provinces were remunerative to the Roman
state. Spain, where warfare was incessant, was certainly a
heavy loss. Macedonia was no source of profit. Sicily,
largely owing to the Roman Peace, became the granary of
the capital, but Asia alone was a source of great wealth to
the treasury. There were, of course, harbour dues for the
provinces as for Italy herself.
On the whole, it is fair to say that local autonomy was
generally preserved. Either through policy or, more prob-
ably, because the Romans habitually took things as they
found them, the previous laws and constitutions of conquered
units, whether cities or tribes, remained in force. In Syracuse,
for example, the law of King Hiero remained, and it was
much better for the Sicilians to pay their taxes to Rome than
to be subject to the personal extortions of a monster like
Agathocles. In law-suits between citizens of one Sicilian
state the trial was to be held in that state by a native judge
and according to the native laws — possibly with a right of
appeal to the Roman governor. In suits between Romans
and Sicilians the judge was to be a native of the defendant's
state. So far the Roman sway is the mildest, the most
benevolent system of government which has ever been
61
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
imposed by an empire upon conquered subjects. Athens, it
will be remembered, had grown rich and beautiful by mis-
applying the contributions of allies which she had converted
into the tribute of subjects. Sparta had put garrisons into
every conquered city. So had Carthage. No modern power
allows as much local autonomy to conquered territories as
Rome granted to hers.
But in every conquered territory it was necessary to have
an armed force, large or small according to circumstances,
and for the soldiers a general. As all the Roman magis-
trates were military in the first instance, but also judicial and
executive — as, in fact, the nature of Roman ideas of imperium
implied an unlimited competence in every department of rule,
the provincial general was also, necessarily, a provincial judge
and administrator free from all control during his year of
office. No doubt the Romans, if they had possessed the
wisdom and retrospective foresight so lavishly displayed by
their modern critics, would, in sending officers to distant
parts, have revised their notions of imperium and defined the
spheres of duty which they entrusted to their generals. If
they had studied political science they might have learnt that
it is wise to separate the legal functions from the administra-
tive, and both from the military. Or if they had made
historical researches, they might have discovered that the
Persian administrative system of three independent function-
aries in each satrapy was the best that had yet been discovered.
But they did none of these things : they simply blundered
on in the old Roman way, more maiorum. They did not
foresee the demoralising effect of absolute power in an
alien and subject land. They did not foresee the necessity
for central control in a Roman Colonial Office ; there was
not even any Latin equivalent for the Franco-Grecian term
"bureaucracy." Thus they were compelled to trust to the
honour and sense of justice which was, when this colossal
experiment began, still believed to exist in the heart of a
Roman officer and gentleman, unaware that corruption
62
CONQUEST
was beginning even then to taint the whole body of their
aristocracy.
They might, one would think, have realised the super-
human temptations in the path of a Roman governor. He
went out, with a company of his own friends, chiefly ambitious
young men, for a staff, with a senatorial legate chosen by
himself, and a juvenile quaestor as his subordinate to keep
accounts, if he could : for there was no competitive examina-
tion in book-keeping. The governor went for a year only
among a people whose traditions, laws, and even language,
were probably quite unknown to him. He left an austere
and barbarous republic to act as monarch among flattering
Greeks or cringing Asiatics. No power on earth could even
criticise him while he held the imperium : afterwards he might
be impeached, it is true, but before a court of his own friends.
He had just completed a civic magistracy, and these were
won and held by means of lavish bribes and public entertain-
ments. Opportunities to recoup himself were irresistible.
True to the mos maiorum, the Romans invented no new
magistracy for the provinces. Already as early as the Samnite
Wars they had found it necessary sometimes to break down
the annual system by proroguing a magistrate's term of office
in order that he might finish a campaign. If he were praetor
or consul, he continued for another year as propraetor or
proconsul. When Sicily was conquered the Romans added
another praetor to the two functionaries already existing,
another for Sardinia, and two more for Spain ; but after that
the new provinces were entrusted to propraetors and pro-
consuls, or, in case of a war, to the consuls themselves during
the latter part of their year of office. The senate decided
what the magisterial provinces should be, which of them
should be consular, and then generally the qualified officers
balloted for them.
The same want of elasticity in the Roman system spoilt
their good intentions in the matter of finance. As we have
seen, the State imposed no crushing burdens upon its vassals.
63
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Had the stipendium been honestly collected by official emis-
saries under proper control, the provincials would have had
little cause of complaint. But the Romans here again pro-
vided no new functionaries for the new duty. In some cases
they allowed the subject communities to collect their own
taxes and forward the required aggregate to Rome, and in
such cases there was a great deal of peculation on the way.
But where this was impossible the senate farmed out the
collection of taxes under contract to certain individuals who
bought them at auction. The publicani quickly grew into a
regular institution, grouping themselves into capitalist syn-
dicates which combined tax-farming with money-lending.
Banks were established in every provincial centre. This
capitalist class soon established itself as a political body at
Rome, where it exerted a powerful and sinister influence over
public policy. Just below the senatorial order were the
equites. Of old they had been real cavalry, for it was only
the rich who could afford to maintain a horse and the neces-
sary equipment ; now it was mainly a titular distinction,
implying a certain income. It was here that the bankers of
Rome and the financial interests were grouped in a single
powerful class. For a time these "horsemen" actually
secured control of the jury courts which tried charges of
extortion. Then the lot of the provincials was wretched
indeed: to pay their greedy and extortionate tax-gatherers
they had often to borrow from the same individuals in their
capacity of usurers, and then, if they ventured to journey to
Rome with a complaint, they would meet the same evil class
in the very judges who heard their complaints. This was
how "publican and sinner" came to be an appropriate con-
junction.
The corruption, as we shall see later, began to be serious
with the acquisition of Asia. At first the incompetence due
to the inexperience of the governors and their staffs was the
chief failing of the system. But when Asia with its stored-up
capital, its possibilities of exploitation, and its extreme help-
64
CONQUEST
lessness, fell to Rome, traders and money-lenders swarmed
down upon it, so that there were 80,000 Italians there when
Mithradates ordered his famous massacre. -Thus money
poured into the capital, and there was an unseemly scramble
for wealth. But for the present we are only concerned with
the system of provincial government as it was in the beginning.
I think we may conclude that it started with the best inten-
tions, but with two inherent defects, both due to the con-
servatism of the Roman character. Their constitution was
municipal and their outlook parochial. Their empire-building
was precisely of the narrow-minded, well-intentioned character
that one would expect if the Marylebone Borough Council
suddenly found itself presented with Ireland, France, and half
Spain, and asked to govern them.
THE IMPERIAL CITY
A poor man cannot become a millionaire without at leas
altering his way of living, and a little backward provincial
town cannot find itself the mistress of a great empire without
undergoing very profound modifications. In 208 B.C. Rome
was struggling for her life with a foreign enemy raging at her
gates. Fifty years later she was mistress in the Mediter-
ranean, and owner of more land than she could conceive.
One of the effects of the change was a prodigious influx
of wealth into the city. In war indemnities alone six or seven
millions sterling must have flowed into the coffers of a state
which had till recently conducted its business with lumps of
copper. In loot Rome was said to have gained above two
millions in the Syrian War, and about the same in the Third
Macedonian. Vast tracts of public land were gained, and
there was a steady influx of tributary corn and money : public
mines, such as those in Spain, must be added. There never
had been regular direct taxation in the city : a Roman paid
his dues in the form of personal service, and a tributum was
the mark of defeat. But now all taxation ceased at Rome
except an indirect tariff on salt and the customs at the ports.
E 65
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Henceforth Rome was living on her empire and growing fat
upon it. It is true that expenditure was also increasing. In
the earliest days there had been no public finance. A war
was conducted by a citizen army, who marched out for a few
days' campaigning in the neighbourhood, wearing their own
armour and carrying a commissariat provided by their wives.
The only public expense was the religious duty of providing
beasts for sacrifice, and even that was largely defrayed by
fines paid to the treasury. But now expeditions cost money,
armies soldiering for months in distant lands had to be fed
and maintained, ships had to be built, equipment and machines
provided. Nevertheless, with wise financial administration
the treasury ought to have had a decent surplus. But wisdom
in finance was lacking : although we are assured that book-
keeping was one of the points in which the old Roman pater-
familias especially took pride, yet the public treasury of
Rome, which had the temple of Saturn for its bank, was
managed by the quaestors, the lowest grade of Roman
official life, consisting of young men just beginning a public
career. That fact alone will show how far more important
the Romans regarded .warfare than finance, and how far
wrong are those historians who make Roman greatness de-
pendent upon economic advantages. The maladministration
of finance was not due to dishonesty at first: Polybius, the
Greek historian, who was brought up in the heart of Greek
politics under Aratus, the cunning chief of the Achaean
League, and came to Rome in the second century as a
hostage, was genuinely astonished at Roman honesty. Their
financial errors were due to sheer inexperience in the hand-
ling of large sums of money.
Little of this vast influx of money was spent upon public
works. To begin with, there was not the taste for fine
architecture at Rome, nor indeed for art of any sort. The
private houses were still mainly built of unbaked bricks or
tiles, often with thatched or shingled roofs : the interiors of
the bare simplicity of a country farm-house. And then
66
CONQUEST
Roman religion, which, as we have seen, was always some-
what cold towards the high Olympian gods, offering its
real devotion to obscurer rustic powers, made little claim for
temples and stately shrines. Temples had been built under
the Etruscan domination in the fifth century B.C. But there-
after for a period of four centuries there is an almost complete
blank in the annals of Roman archaeology. If anything was
built between Tarquin and Sulla it was generally of wood
and brick or rubble with no architectural pretensions.
Augustus swept it all away with contempt. Of course it was
the fashion for Cato and the old Roman party to say they
preferred good old Roman temples with the painted terra-
cotta ornaments to all the new-fashioned fripperies of Greece ;
but that is only the spleen of the outraged Philistine. These
centuries of growth are empty of art.
What the nouveaux riches of the second century B.C. found
to spend their money on it is hard to say. In 218 B.C. the
people passed a resolution as the Lex Claudia forbidding
senators to engage in foreign commerce. It is very unlikely
that the senate would have allowed that if they had already
been deeply involved in business. But this enactment
checked the only fruitful use of wealth : it turned, and was
possibly intended to turn, the money of the great houses into
land speculation. This was followed by disastrous results.
The Punic Wars had thrown millions of acres out of cultiva-
tion. That land which had belonged to rebels passed to the
Roman state as public land and the scramble for it was the
cause of momentous political conflicts in the succeeding
generation. But rich senators acquired enormous estates
without any deep interest in their economic productiveness.
Like the old English squire the old Roman senator was not
a professional nor even a very serious landowner, and more-
over he was an absentee. Thus large tracts of Central Italy
became the estates of rich men who added park to park and
villa to villa rather as a hobby than for any good reason.
The common notion of Italy before the Punic Wars as a vast
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
smiling cornfield, dotted with little farm-houses and country
cottages full of stalwart husbandmen, is both unhistorical and
ungeographical. The Italian farmer lived — like the mediaeval
European farmer — mostly in townships which he called
" cities," and it was only the plain-land in the vicinity of a
town which was regularly ploughed and sown. A glance at
the map will show how little of Central Italy is suited for
cereal cultivation. But, if the records are true, 400 Italian
townships had been destroyed in the great wars and that
meant, perhaps, 400,000 acres out of cultivation. And what
had become of their inhabitants ? Thousands, of course, had
left their bones on Roman battlefields, but thousands more,
when their term of service was done, went to swell the
proletariat of Rome. There they herded in ill-built, ill-
drained quarters on the low ground of the city. Physically
and morally they declined. What is perhaps worse, they
could not perpetuate their breed under the new conditions.
It takes generations for the human animal to adapt itself to
new conditions. Modern Europe has seen the enormous
influx into towns accompanied by a decline in the birth-rates,
and the swollen town-populations are only maintained by
constant influx from the country. It has truly been said that
the future rests with the race which can most readily adapt
itself to such new conditions. But the Romans never could.
The humbler quarters of the city, though they grew more and
more populous, grew, it seems, by immigration and not by
natural increase. Thus the populace of Rome became more
and more cosmopolitan, less and less Roman. These generali-
sations are apparently well founded, but it must not be
forgotten that we know scarcely anything of the free poor at
Rome. A nation of orators generally forgets to speak of the
butcher, the baker, and his colleagues. It is as impossible
to believe that all trade and industry at Rome was carried on
by slaves as that the poor of a city can live by bread alone.
"Bread and the circus" is a respectable phrase, as true as
epigrams ever are, but it cannot be the whole truth.
68
CONQUEST
As we have seen in the case of Greece, all ancient city-
states undertook duties which the modern individualistic
community regards, up to the present at least, as private and
Map of Italy, showing ground over 1000 feet high
not public. The city-state regarded it as part of its business
to see that its shareholders did not starve, therefore the
supply of corn and the price of it was always a matter of
state supervision. From the earliest days of Roman history
there had been officers charged with the duty of securing
69
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
the city's corn-supply at reasonable charges. Now the corn
was beginning to arrive in the form of tribute from Sicily
and Africa. Soon we shall have the agrarian laws and all
the disorder that resulted from them. But it is important
to observe that the depopulation of the Italian countryside
resulted from war and politics as well as from economic causes.
Of course economic causes kept it depopulated. Nature
never intended Central Italy for a wheat-growing land ; the
vine, the olive, and the fig are its best products. Now that
the seas were open for free imports it no longer paid to
plough and sow the stony upland farms.
So the land passed out of cultivation. As in England,
grazing was found to be cheaper, easier, and more profitable
than agriculture. Oxen were used for ploughing or reserved
for sacrifice. The Italians, like the Greeks, seldom ate meat
and then little but smoked bacon, but as all Romans wore
the woollen toga sheep-farming was profitable. In summer
the sheep grazed on the Sabine hills, in winter on the Latin
plain among the stubble of the cornfields or beneath the olive-
trees. Wild slave-shepherds tended them.
t Slavery was the canker at the root of ancient civilisation.
It assumed more awful proportions at Rome than in Greece
owing to the hard materialism of the Roman character. Of
course it had existed from the earliest times as the common
lot of the prisoner of war. The sturdy Roman farmer, so
dear to Roman rhetoric, was after all little more than a sturdy
slave-driver. The actual field labour had always been in the
hands of slaves. As early as 367 B.C., if we may believe the
records of that age, legislation had attempted to fix a certain
proportion of free labour on country estates. From the first,
too, the slave had been the merest chattel, a colleague of
the dog, a little lower even than the wife or daughter of the
Roman house-father. It was cheaper to buy slaves than to
let them breed, cheaper to sell them for what they would
fetch when they grew old than to keep them. You could
dodge the gods, who enjoined holidays even for slaves, by
70
CONQUEST
giving your slaves work indoors on feast-days — such are some
of the maxims of the venerable Cato, who is the type of the old
Roman squire, and who personally attended to the scourging
of his slaves after dinner. Now slaves were becoming more
numerous and cheaper than ever — you might have to pay as
much as ^1000 for a pretty boy or girl — but a wild Sardinian
or Gaul or Spaniard cost very little. Hence began the really
pernicious system of specialised slavery. A wealthy Roman
moved neither hand nor foot for himself. To have only ten
slaves was contemptible poverty. Each slave was trained
simply for one special task — cook, barber, footman, bearer,
lacquey, or schoolmaster. The shepherds and gladiators
might retain their manhood, as indeed they did, and showed
it in frightful revolts during this and the succeeding generation.
But the domestic slaves of the capital had no hope but to
cringe and wheedle their way into favour by flattering and
corrupting their masters. One alleviation of the slave's lot
there was : it was easier for a slave to earn his freedom at
Rome than in Greece. But this type of person when liberated,
and his children after him, made the worst type of citizen, and
tended still further to corrupt the tone of the proletariat.
Worse than domestic slavery was the plantation system,
which during all this period was growing in the country. At
its worst it meant huge slave barracks, in which the slaves
lived in dungeons underground and worked by day in gangs,
chained night and day. It was a profitable system of agri-
culture and it rapidly ousted free labour. In the city too, in the
merchant ships and the mines, a cruel and vicious system of
servitude was destroying free industry. Truly the hollowest
of historic frauds was the eighteenth-century view of an
idealised Roman republic of citizens, free, equal, and fraternal.
It inspired the Convention and coloured the periods of
Mirabeau, but so far as the records prove, the virtuous and
liberal old Roman never existed.
Equality beyond the name was certainly unknown at
Rome. All government was in the hands of a close circle of
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
aristocrats whose stronghold was in the senate. By virtue of
the client system the great houses of the Claudii, the Cornelii,
the Fabii, the Livii, the Flaminii, the Julii, and a dozen others
kept the high offices of state exclusively in their hands. By
this time the censors drew up the senate-lists chiefly from
the ranks of ex-magistrates, and the magistracies became a
graduated course. It required extraordinary pushfulness or
wealth or patronage for a new man to insinuate himself into
, the charmed circle. The old patriciate had gone, politically
at least, and only survived for religious purposes, but Rome
still remained a thrall to aristocracy of a far more dangerous
type, an aristocracy of office. One of the troubles of Rome
lay in the fact that this aristocracy was daily becoming less
warlike and less competent.
A great deal of nonsense has been talked about the luxury
of the Romans as one of the causes of their decline. Even
Mommsen relates with shocked emotion that they imported
anchovies from the Black Sea and wine from Greece. Two
hot meals a day they had and " frivolous articles " including
bronze-mounted couches. There were professional cooks,
and actually bakers' shops began to appear about 171 B.C.
It is true that all this luxury would pale into insignificance
before the modern artisan's breakfast-table with bread from
Russia, bacon from America, tea from Ceylon or coffee from
Brazil, sugar from Jamaica, and eggs from Denmark. Cato
would have swooned at the sight of our picture-frames coated
with real gold, for he publicly stigmatised a senator who had
£30 worth of silver plate. The truth is that Rome having
grown rich was just beginning to grow civilised. It is the
everlasting misfortune of Rome that events occurred in that
order.
In conquering Macedon Rome had become acquainted
with civilisation. At that date civilisation meant Hellenism
slightly tinctured with Orientalism, a culture which, though still
alive and still original and creative, was certainly past its
prime. The Hellenistic period of Greek art has been unjustly
72
PLATE XI. PUBLIUS SCIPIO AFRICANUS
CONQUEST
depreciated in comparison with the more youthful and virile
age of Pericles. But it could still boast of great scholars,
scientists, and philosophers, both at Alexandria and Athens.
Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus form a group of original poets
who are really great, and an art that could produce the lovely
Aphrodite of Melos cannot with justice be termed decadent.
Politically, morally, and physically Greece was no doubt long
past the vigour of her youth, but intellectually she was still
well qualified to play the part of schoolmistress to the lusty
young barbarian of the West. We have seen that in very
remote times Rome had come under Etruscan influences which
were closely akin to Greek. There had been some inter-
change, if tradition may be trusted, of Greek and Etruscan
art and artists. Greek painters had worked in Rome at a
very early date. Then came perhaps two centuries of relapse
in the cultural sense while Rome was busy with warfare and
conquest. In 300 B.C. she was almost entirely destitute of
accomplishments, and even, if we may except law, politics, and
military skill, of civilisation. The war with Pyrrhus, the
conquest of Tarentum and then of Sicily brought in Greek
slaves, and semi-Greek South- Italian citizens who were bound
to have some influence. Then came direct dealings with
Greece in the three Macedonian wars, and every Roman who
had fought with Flamininus or Paulus returned to Rome if
not an apostle of culture at any rate a man who had seen
civilisation with his own eyes and could no longer regard old
Roman ways as sufficient for man's happiness. How could
eyes that had seen the Zeus of Pheidias at Olympia glowing
with ivory and gold be content with the old vermilion Jove of
his native temple ?
Nevertheless it was very slowly that culture filtered in.
All through the third century and for the first half of the
second Rome was still incessantly occupied with war. Her
tastes were brutalised and demoralised by it. When drama
painfully began, the dramatists sadly lamented that their
audiences would desert the theatre for the sight of a rope-
73
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
dancer or a beast-baiting or, better still, a pair of gladiators.
From the first it was vain to attempt the creation of a national
drama for a people whose craving was for the sight of blood.
Gladiatoral combats are said to have been of Etruscan origin.
They first appeared at Rome in the early part of the third
century in connection with funeral displays. From every
African expedition wild beasts were brought home to be
slaughtered in the Roman amphitheatres. These bloody
shows indicate the real tastes of the Romans from the earliest
times. They are no spurious growth of the so-called
"degenerate Empire." On one occasion, when the music of
some Greek flute-players failed to please a Roman audience,
the presiding magistrate ordered the unlucky artists to fight
one another, and the hoots of the crowd were instantly
transformed to rapturous applause.
All the arts were held in contempt, all were entrusted to
slaves or the poorest kind of citizens. Thus Hellenic civilisa-
tion was transported to Rome under a double disadvantage.
Not only was Greek civilisation itself already past its prime,
but it was interpreted largely by slaves. Every Roman of
position had Greeks among his retinue — not, of course, the
citizens of famous cities like Athens or Alexandria, which
were still free, but low-caste, half-barbarian wretches from the
great market at Delos or from the southern towns of Italy—
for clerks, accountants, scribes, jesters, procurers, physicians,
pedagogues, flute-players, philosophers, cooks, concubines,
and schoolmasters. We may be sure that it was not the most
favourable type of Hellenism that would creep into Rome by
such channels as these. But it was precisely in this manner
that Roman literature began. The noble general M. Livius
Salinator brought from Tarentum in about 275 B.C. a Greek
slave named Andronikos, as a tutor for his sons. This
man received his liberty, and as Livius Andronicus set up a
school. For his school he required books, and as there was
no other text-book in Latin but the XII Tables, he under-
took the translation of Homer's Odyssey into the native
74
CONQUEST
Italian measure of Saturnian verse. His work was, of course,
very indifferently performed, but it remained a primer of
education down to the schooldays of Horace. Emboldened
by this success he proceeded to supply the Roman stage with
translations of Greek tragedies.
Such was the beginning ; the sequel was not much more
promising. Naevius was a Campanian who translated Greek
comedies and tragedies. In the former he attempted the old
Greek custom of political allusions, but speedily found that
there was no such liberty of speech in Rome as had prevailed
in the palmy days of Athenian comedy. An allusion to the
Metellus family brought the famous and thoroughly old Roman
poetical retort :
dabunt malum Metelli Naevio poetae,
and was fulfilled by the imprisonment of the dramatist. Thus
the beginnings of literature at Rome were by no means easy.
The dramatists were hampered by severe police restrictions
as well as by the barbarity of their public. It is interesting
to note that both these poets also attempted the epic style.
Livius Andronicus was actually commissioned by the priests
to celebrate the victory of Sena in verse, and Naevius wrote
an account of the First Punic War.
For comedy the Romans appear to have had some natural
taste. It seems that a very rude and barbaric form of
dramatic dialogue mixed with buffoonery was native to Italy in
the Fescennine Songs, though even these are said to have been
of Etruscan invention. So the Romans at their festivals were
content to listen to comedies if the humour was obvious enough,
if there was plenty of horseplay. The setting was wretched
indeed. Instead of the magnificent marble theatres of Greece,
wooden booths were temporarily erected in the amphitheatre,
and a noisy disorderly audience listened with good-humoured
contempt to the efforts of the actors who tried to amuse them.
Sometimes the chorus would be sung by trained musicians,
while the actors on the stage illustrated the inaudible words by
75
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
pantomimic gestures. It was utterly crude and inartistic from
beginning to end, and in deplorable contrast to the beginnings
of Drama in Greece. There it had been a national service of
worship to the gods. Here it was a trivial amusement in the
hands of slaves and foreigners.
Of the three great comedians, Plautus, though a genuine
free Italian of Umbria, had been reduced by poverty to
the position almost of a slave ; Cscilius was a prisoner
of war from the neighbourhood of Milan, who had been
brought to Rome as a slave and then set free ; Terence
was a Carthaginian by birth, belonging as a slave to the
Senator Terentius Lucanus, and subsequently being
liberated became a friend of the younger Scipio. Ennius,
the "father" of epic verse and tragedy, was a client of the
elder Scipio and a Greek-speaking Calabrian by birth.
Pacuvius, the best of the early tragedians, was a native of
Brundisium, and therefore more Greek than Roman ; he too
belonged to the Scipionic circle. The activity of these
writers belongs mainly to the first half of the second century.
Not one of them was a Roman by origin, still less was there
anything distinctively Roman in their work. Except from
the linguistic point of view there is little to be said about any
of them. The comic dramatists were engaged in trans-
lating the work of the Greek comedians of the third phase,
especially Menander and Philemon. To meet the demand
for more plot, more action, with less dialogue and less poetry,
they would generally make a patchwork of two or three
Greek plays. From the artistic point of view the work was
clumsily done. There was little pretence of Romanising the
characters or the scenes, generally they were frankly Greek
with strange intrusions from Roman life. The source from
which they drew was by now a stereotyped comedy of
manners with stock characters — the heavy father, either an
indulgent debauchee or a stingy curmudgeon ; the old woman,
generally a procuress ; the gay and profligate young hero ;
the fair heroine, generally a meretrix, and a background of
76
CONQUEST
parasites, bullies, pandars, slave-dealers, and scoundrelly
slaves, who came in for recurrent beatings to the great enter-
tainment of the audience. The situations are also " taken
from stock," facial resemblances, disguised strangers, mistaken
identities, veiled women and so forth. The "love interest,"
such as it is, almost invariably centres round the desire of
a young profligate for a courtesan. The atmosphere is
generally brutal and immoral. There is often a ludicrous
want of dramatic imagination in the stage management. Yet
the comedies of Plautus and Terence have played a larger
part in monasteries and schoolrooms than any other literature
in the world, and through Shakespeare and Moliere have had
a decisive influence in the history of the drama. We do not
possess enough of the original Greek sources to say very
definitely how much was contributed by the Roman dramatists
of their own. Where we do get passages for comparison
the Latin version has generally lost a great deal in wit and
neatness of expression. The prologues, so far as they are
genuine, are at any rate in the case of Plautus extremely bald
and crude. " Now I will tell you why I have come forward
here and what I intend in order that you may know the
name of this play. For so far as the story goes it is a short
one. Now I will tell you what I was anxious to inform you
of: the name of this play in Greek is Onagos — Demophilus
(or Diphilus?) composed it, Maccius turned it into Latin.
He wishes it called Asinaria, if you please." And so he
proceeds to unwind his plot and relate how the young spend-
thrift Argyrripus won the favours of the courtesan Philenium
by duping her mother, the procuress, and cheating his mother,
a shrew, out of twenty minae by the co-operation of his immoral
old father who hoped to secure the young woman for himself.
It would be wrong, however, to underrate the literary
merits of Plautus and Terence. These authors reveal to us
something of the natural speech of the Roman — Plautus in
particular, for Terence is already far more " classical " in
his language. It is not always easy to say how far the
77
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
amusement which we get from them is legitimate, or how far
it is laughter at the expense of their antique artlessness and
clumsiness. But Plautus has a rich vein of simple humour
and an irresistible sly appeal to his audience which often
makes one unconscious of the garbage in which he is dealing.
Terence has a polish, a graceful way of putting the obvious,
and a purity of diction which sometimes makes his young men
seem almost gentlemen and his young women almost virtuous.
There is a great deal of sound worldly morality in Terence
and some pure sentiment. But it is necessary here to lay
stress upon the fact that the literary arts of Rome never
possessed the fresh innocence or even the simple coarseness
of youth. It was little harm, perhaps, that the gladiators, the
rope-dancers, the bear-baiters, and the charioteers won the
day in the affections of Roman audiences.
Father Ennius, too, in his tragedies was little more than
a translator. He was employed consciously by the great
Scipio to educate and broaden the Roman taste. He had
learnt of the Greek philosophers to disbelieve in the gods, or
rather he had learnt the deadly Euhemerist doctrine that the
gods of Olympus are but the memories of long dead human
heroes, or that they sit, as Epicurus also taught,
" On the hills . . . together careless of mankind."
"ego deum genus esse dixi et dicam semper caelitum,
sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus,
nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest."
At the age of fifty Ennius set himself to relate the whole
of Roman history in eighteen books of epic verse. No one
claims for him the rank of a great poet, but he shaped for
Vergil's hand that magnificent instrument the Latin hexa-
meter, and many scholars believe that he vitally affected
the literary language of Rome by preserving the terminal
inflexions which were dropping out of current speech. All
the fragments of Ennius that have survived, though often
rough and ugly, yet possess a massive dignity of their own,
78
CONQUEST
and often a most solemn majesty of cadence, as in the lines
with which I have headed this chapter. But here again we
must notice that the rugged father of Latin poetry had
already taken over the scepticism of the declining religion of •
Greece.
For many generations now Roman religion had been
losing its native character and becoming cosmopolitan
and denationalised. As we have seen, its genuinely native
elements were mainly rural and now the Roman was a
townsman with a townsman's light scepticism and craving for
novelty and sensation. Jupiter and Minerva and the other
high gods had from the first been largely foreigners ; at any
rate few discernibly Latin ideas appear in the cults or per-
sonalities. As early as 204 B.C., that is, in the throes of the
Great Punic War, the worship of Cybele — the Great Mother
of Phrygian ritual — had been introduced along with its
begging eunuch priests. Apollo with appropriate athletic
games had arrived a few years earlier. New gods multiplied,
old gods became hellenised, Roman priesthoods became more
and more political, being simply obtained by popular election
like any other public office, or crack dining-clubs for the
aristocracy. As the gods multiplied faith declined. Ini86B.c.
the Senate discovered a whole system of secret nocturnal
orgies which under the name of Bacchic mysteries had spread
with extraordinary rapidity throughout Italy. Ten thousand
men were arrested and condemned, mostly to death, but the
associations flourished unchecked.
Morality, public and private, was equally unsound. Publicly
we have sufficient stories of bribery by candidates for office —
not to mention the systematic corruption of the electorate
by corn-doles and shows — to prove that political unclean-
ness was of very old standing in Rome. As for private
virtue it may be that the world of pimps and prostitutes
which flits across the Plautine stage is borrowed from Athens,
but it was certainly familiar at Rome and rapidly domesticated
itself. Slavery had always existed there, and immorality is
79
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
inseparable from slavery. Now with a mob of retired soldiers
gathered promiscuously and without employment in the
capital immorality was multiplied in every class. As early
as 234 B.C. there was public complaint of the unwillingness of
the Roman men of good family to face the responsibilities
of marriage. Already, as in the case of C. Calpurnius Piso,
there were horrible domestic tragedies in great houses.
Divorce was already common. As usual the Pharisees of
the day strove to combat immorality with prudishness. Cato
the Censor punished a Roman senator for kissing his wife in
the presence of their daughter.
Now, let it be remembered that this very age of which
we are speaking, the age of conquest in the Punic and Greek
wars, is the heroic age of Roman history, the age to which
poets and historians of the empire looked back as golden.
We do not rely upon satirists or gossip-dealers for this gloomy
picture of Rome in her palmy days. The facts upon which
it is based are beyond dispute. What inference are we to
draw? Reviewing those facts and especially noticing the
dates, we see that all the vicious features of Roman society,
the cruelty, the idleness, the debauchery, the political cor-
ruption, the lack of artistic taste, the immorality and crime
in the noble houses, the injustice and oppression of the poor
and helpless, are no products of the Empire, but deeply
engrained in the Roman character and entwined about the
roots of her history. In our pursuit of old Roman virtue we
may go to the furthest bounds of historical record in vain.
No doubt, before Rome began to be a city and long before
she began to have a history, there were simple laborious
rustics on the Latin plains, who possessed, for want of oppor-
tunity, the virtuous abstinences of the poor. But it is mani-
festly false to ascribe degeneration either to the fall of the
Republican system of government or to the introduction of
civilisation. If one cause more than another is to be assigned
for the rapid growth of evil tendencies it is the exhaustion
80
CONQUEST
consequent upon incessant warfare and the brutality engen-
dered by continual life in camp. The only thing that could
mitigate the latter was surely education and culture. Instead,
then, of Greek civilisation being the cause of degeneracy at
Rome we may more truthfully assert that it came to save her
from ruin at a time when she was threatened with internal
decay. Had it come earlier or been accepted more willingly it
might have done more to brighten the darker pages of Roman
history. It was their starved souls, empty of ideals, devoid
even of reasonable occupation for their leisure or harmless use
for their wealth, which rendered the aristocracy of Rome so
utterly vulgar and debased.
81
ni
THE LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
urbem uenalem et mature perituram si emptorem inuenerit.
Jugurtha in SALLUST.
HERE is no doubt that many of the dis-
quieting symptoms which we have just
noted as afflicting Roman society in the
second century B.C. might have been
allayed, and possibly even the causes re-
moved, by a wise and foreseeing govern-
ment. In dealing with the allies and
subjects who formed her vast and growing
empire any modern politician could have
told the senate that they had to choose one
of two courses — either centralisation or
devolution of power, either a just and firm system of control
or a liberal grant of autonomous rights. But the senate
had no policy. It left things to shape themselves. Again,
the agrarian difficulty of a deserted countryside and an idle,
disorderly city proletariat could easily have been solved if it
had been taken early, before the habit of city-life grew upon
the discharged warriors. Again the senate did nothing till
it was too late. Then, having acquired an overseas empire
all over the Mediterranean, the senate, if it had not been
blind, should have seen that it was necessary to maintain a
strong navy and police the seas in the interests of commerce.
But again the government neglected its duty. For these and
many other sins of negligence there was a heavy reckoning
to be paid. It required no oracle to foretell disaster.
82
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
While the mass of the senate sat by inert and helpless,
allowing the helm of state to sway from side to side in their
nerveless fingers, two small parties in the state had policies
of their own. There was Cato (it is difficult to find a party
for him to lead), who believed that by repeating the mystic
words mos maioritm he could put the clock back to the
days of Cincinnatus, if not of Numa, mistaking symptoms
for diseases and hoping, like many another revivalist, to make
people virtuous by making them uncomfortable, a task
doomed to failure from the start.
Over against these were set a party who may almost be
termed liberals, in that they were prepared to go forward
hopefully in company with the spirit of their age. Their
foremost representatives were the Scipios, who acted as
patrons to many of the literary circle we have just described,
and were themselves eager to accept the new culture. Un-
fortunately there was very little wisdom or foresight among
them, and, above all, there was an aristocratic pride which
would have rendered them impossible as leaders even if they
had had any idea of a destination. As a family the Scipios
were by no means uniformly competent, and most of them
subsisted on the glamour of the name, which itself had been
very largely due to the good luck and opportunity of Scipio
Africanus, the Elder and the Younger.
The special feature which distinguishes the age which we
have now to consider — that is, roughly, the hundred years
from 146 B.C. onwards — is that the historian's attention now
begins to be focussed on a series of personal biographies. ^
One might almost say it is already clear that some individual
must dominate this ill-constructed imperial city, and the only
question left is who it shall be. In the true polity of the
city-state the influence of personality is reduced to a mini-
mum, and various devices, such as the lot at Athens or the
double and annual consulship at Rome, are employed to
prevent that individual predominance which so easily turns/
to despotism. It is not due so much to envy as to an instinct
83
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
of self-preservation that republics are notoriously ungrateful
to their great men. But personal eminence, if it is dangerous
to the liberty of a republic, is almost essential to the govern-
ment of a great empire and the control of huge armies. The
incompetence of the annual generals, now that warfare was
on a large scale and conducted far from the overseeing eye of
the administration, became more noticeable. Already in the
Third Macedonian War it had been disgracefully apparent.
Now the long campaigns against Viriathus in Spain and
Jugurtha in Africa reveal pitiful ineptitude, coupled with
shameless dishonesty, in the republican generals of the aristo-
cracy. Roman armies are no longer invincible in the field,
they are not even disciplined.
THE GRACCHI
But first we have to recall a futile attempt at reform of
the economic distresses of the imperial city. It is not so
much the actual schemes of the brothers Gracchus which
interest us — for the schemes themselves were unworkable
and contained kas much folly as wisdom — as the manner in
which reform was proposed and defeated. The Gracchi
themselves, though of plebeian origin, belonged by numerous
ties to the liberal aristocracy. Their famous mother, Cornelia
— one of the many Roman women who by their influence
help to make Roman history so different from Greek — was
the daughter of Scipio Africanus. Tiberius, the elder
brother, was married to a Claudia ; among his friends were
Scsevola and Crassus. Thus on all sides he belonged to the
circle of progressive nobles. His education had been such
as one would expect from such surroundings. As their father
had died at an early age, it was Cornelia's task to make
her two "jewels " worthy of her glorious name. Accordingly
she employed the most eminent Greeks for their tutors. The
boys were trained, no doubt, in Greek oratory to declaim in
praise of liberty and tyrannicides, in Greek history and
political science to divide constitutions up into monarchies,
84
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
aristocracies, and democracies, and to believe that in the
latter all power belongs to the people. At the same time
their military training was not neglected ; in horsemanship
and feats of arms they outshone all their comrades. Their
prospects were in every way brilliant and hopeful. While
still a youth of about sixteen, Tiberius was elected augur.
The proud aristocrat, Apptus Claudius, as it is related by
Plutarch, offered him the hand of his daughter, and, having
secured it, rushed home to announce her betrothal. As soon
as his wife heard of it she exclaimed : " Why in such a hurry
unless you have got Tiberius Gracchus for our daughter ? "
It is the misfortune of rhetorical history that all its good
characters appear to be prigs and all its bad ones scoundrels ;
but it is certain that if Tiberius had been content with the
easy road to fame which stretched before him in youth, he
might without trouble have had the world at his feet. He
accompanied his brother-in-law, the younger Africanus, in
the last expedition against Carthage. In camp he was the
most distinguished of the young officers, and the first to scale
the walls of the city. He served his qusestorship in Spain,
and there showed all the diplomatic skill of the Cornelian
family. He saved an army of 20,000 men from destruction
at Numantia. The Spaniards loved him no less for his name
than for his uprightness. Thus at the age of thirty-one he
had his future assured. A brilliant orator with distinguished
public service behind him, he was obviously destined for the
consulship in the near future, and then for a huge province,
for wealth, fame, and honour.
Call him a prig and a doctrinaire, if you will, for not being
content with that prospect. In passing through, on his way
to Spain, he had seen the pleasant lands of Tuscany lying
forlorn and desolate, chained gangs of foreign slaves working
in the fields or tending the flocks of absentee Roman land-
lords, while the sturdy peasants who should have been in
their place were loafing in the streets of Rome. The public
land, conquered in war, had sometimes been simply embezzled
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
by Roman politicians ; sometimes granted to veteran soldiers
only to fall into the hands of speculators. The old Licinian
land-law, which had limited the amount of land which might
be held in one hand, was openly flouted, and leases were
treated as freeholds.
Seeing these things, the young man was filled with a
passion for reform, and deliberately devoted his life to that
task. The modern historians who call him prig and dema-
gogue do not deny the awful mischief which he set himself to
repair. It is hard to know what he should have done to please
them. The senate, by now an entrenched stronghold of pro-
perty dishonestly acquired and privilege dishonestly main-
tained, could obviously never be converted. Filled with
Greek ideas, Tiberius determined to appeal to the demos.
That of course was a mistake. There was no such thing as
a demos at Rome, and there never had been. The relation
between Senate and Comitia was not in the least the same as
that between Council and Assembly in Greece. At Rome
the Senate deliberated and the Comitia ratified ; at Athens
the Council prepared business for the Assembly to discuss and
decide. 1 1 is not that the letter of the constitution really matters
— when people are hungry it does not — but that there was
lacking at Rome the very elements of democracy, an articulate
commons, an organised will of the people. Failing that, any
attempt to pose as champion of the people must be a fraud,
conscious or unconscious. But it is grossly unfair to Gracchus
to suppose that it was conscious. He thought that he was
living in a democracy, he thought that a tribune of the plebs
might fairly claim to be champion of the people, unaware that
the plebs was now an anachronism, and the tribunate merely
a clumsy brake on the wheels of the state. In 133 B.C.
Tiberius had himself elected as one of the ten tribunes, and
immediately prepared to introduce the millennium by legis-
lative process.
He proposed to enforce the old Licinian laws by which
no individual citizen could claim a large holding of public
86
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
land. Then presently, in his childlike ignorance of the
tenacity of property, annoyed at the resistance he encountered,
he further proposed to make his measure retrospective, so as
to evict thousands of noble land-grabbers. The land thus
escheated to the state he proposed to lease on nominal terms
as small holdings to the poorer citizens of Rome. The dis-
tribution was to be carried out by a commission of three.
Very unwisely, but probably because there were no men of
standing in the senate whom he could trust, he made this
commission a family party consisting of himself, his father-in-
law, and his young brother. Property was immediately up in
arms against him. The liberal senators discovered, as even
liberals are apt to do, that one's own property has a sanctity
far superior to other people's. Accordingly, they took the
Roman constitutional method of putting up another tribune
to veto the proposals of Tiberius. Thereupon Tiberius, with
his fantastic notions of the people and the people's rights,
declared that a tribune who opposed the people was no
tribune, and so had Octavius deposed. The senate's answer
was the only constitutional answer left to them, a threat of
prosecution when the tribunate should be over. That, of
course, made it necessary for Tiberius to perpetuate his office.
He gathered a band of followers sworn to protect his life,
proposed a string of attractive measures to secure popular
support, and stood for a second term of office. The senate
put up more tribunes to veto his election. Thus the state
was at a deadlock ; there were no more resources for such a
situation within constitutional limits, so the senators simply
girt up their togas and, led by a Scipio, marched down into
the forum to settle the question of reform in a truly Roman
manner. Tiberius Gracchus was murdered, and his followers
left for judicial assassination.
Ten years later Gaius Gracchus, with a similar programme
and the added motive of piety to his brother's memory, took
up the campaign afresh. The senate, indeed, having slain
the author of reform, had been forced to allow the reforms
87
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
themselves at any rate to start. Some lands had been redis-
tributed, and when another Scipio got a decree passed to stop
the work of the land commission, he too was assassinated.
It is clear that by this time the agrarian agitation had been
largely appeased ; what follows is political merely. The
reformers had got the constitution altered to permit the re-
election of tribunes, and in 123 Gaius was elected to that
office ; he was rather more practical, and therefore far more
dangerous, than his brother, but the passion for vengeance
against the stubborn and brutal nobility had no doubt blinded
his judgment. Coupled with the land-agitation there was
now a loud demand for political rights by the Italians, who
were debarred even from the elementary rights of market and
marriage with each other.
The platform upon which Gaius Gracchus stood was a
radical one. Henceforth every poor citizen was to be supplied
with cheap corn at less than half price, about &,d. a bushel.
The land commission was to be restored. The Assembly was
to be reorganised upon a new basis, which would destroy the
preponderant voting power of the nobility. New colonies
were to be founded, including one at Carthage — a most
salutary measure. Easier terms of military service were to
be granted, including free equipment and the right of appeal.
By these measures, some of them wise and just, some of them
mere vote-catching devices, Gaius won the support of the
people. Then he turned to the second estate — the capitalist
Equites. To buy their favour he took up their demand that
the taxes of " Asia," as the Romans called their new province
bequeathed to them by King Attalus III., should be put up
for auction not locally but in Rome. It seemed to the Romans
that since the Asiatics were bound to be plundered in any case,
as indeed the inhabitants of Asia Minor always had and
always have been plundered, the proceeds might as well flow
straight into the pockets of Roman capitalists. To this he
added the proposition that the jury-lists should henceforth be
drawn from the Equestrian order and the senators excluded.
88
ETRUSCAN WAKRIfB : HROKZE
STATUETTE
PLATE XII
FIG. 2. ROMAN LEGIONARY OF THE
EMPIRE : BRON/E STATUETTE
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
It was probably more iniquitous that money-lenders and
governors should be tried by a jury of money-lenders exclu-
sively than that they should come before a jury of governors
past and future. Neither would seem to us or to the pro-
vincials an ideal arrangement.
Much of this policy, we have to admit, was pure demagogy,
but for that the conservative nobles, who cared nothing for the
welfare of the state, and were impervious to anything but force,
are directly responsible. Gracchus got his measures through
the comitia, and secured his re-election for the next year.
Feeling that his policy had secured him a large and faithful
party of supporters, he now prepared to introduce a measure
which he knew to be necessary for the salvation of his country,
but which he must equally well have known to be unpopular
at Rome, namely, the grant of citizen rights to the Italians.
By this we see that Gaius Gracchus, if he sometimes stooped
to the arts of the demagogue, was also capable of real
statesmanship. The progressive grant of burgess rights as
soon as subject peoples were sufficiently Romanised to be fit for
them was the old Roman policy, which had made the city great
in the past, and kept her safe in the shock of invasion. But
the Romans had now become jealous and exclusive. The
proposal was detested in Rome. Each side organised its
gangs of roughs ; there were daily riots in the streets, and at
last the senatorial party once more charged down into the
forum and slaughtered the second reformer as they had
slaughtered the first. In the prosecutions that followed no
fewer than 3000 of his partisans were executed.
In all this it is evident that the Roman political system had <
completely broken down. The constitution had always been
incredibly ill-defined. There is no doubt that sovereignty
legally belonged to the people, and that senatorial government
was a usurpation, as the Gracchi called it. By calling the
citizen body of Rome a mob or a rabble you do not alter the
rights of the case. It was largely the fault of the Government
that they had been allowed to become so selfish, so disorderly,
89
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
and so corrupt. The extraordinary machinery of the tri-
bunate — ten magistrates, each with an absolute veto upon all
government — had made it impossible to find any constitutional
method 'of reform. The policy of Gaius Gracchus was the only
possible one if Rome was to be saved, and as a matter of plain
fact it was the policy which after a century of unceasing blood-
shed Rome eventually adopted. It was to be a disguised
monarchy, like that of Pericles at Athens, working on the
basis of the tribunician powers. The old ascendancy of the
Senate could not stand a challenge ; not only did it rest upon
no legal title, but it had lost whatever claim to respect it ever
possessed on the score of patriotism or statesmanship. For
the agrarian problem it had no policy but to hold fast to its ill-
gotten lands ; to the demands of the Italian allies it had nothing
but a miserly "no." It watched with indifference the ruin of
Italy, the degeneracy of Rome, and the oppression of the pro-
vincial world. The policy of the Gracchi may have included
dreams and nightmares, but it did look forward and hold out
hopes. The Gracchi had now definitely started a party system.
They had laid the foundation of a democratic movement, and
it is Rome's misfortune that this foundation was built of such
rotten materials. The democracy had been bought by bribes,
but it had failed to exhibit a spark of disinterested statesman-
ship. If ever a state needed a master that state was Rome.
Henceforth until a master came the condition of Rome and
Italy and the provinces was simply deplorable. Nothing could
be done in politics without a hired gang of bravos.
The next conspicuous attempt at reform comes from a
genuine son of the people, one of the very few peasants who
emerge into the light of history at Rome. In the wretchedly
mismanaged Jugurthan war Gaius Marius had shouldered his
way to the front by sheer courage and capacity for war through
a crowd of cowardly and incompetent aristocrats, who almost
openly trafficked with the foreign enemy of Rome, The
90
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
course of this business requires a brief sketch if we are to
understand the condition of Roman government at this
period.
The king of the client state of Numidia dying divided his
realm between two legitimate sons and one illegitimate, the
latter being Jugurtha. This amiable bastard straightway
murdered one of his brothers and attacked the other, who fled
to the Roman province and appealed to the senate for pro-
tection. Jugurtha, already knowing the ropes of senatorial
policy, sent envoys with well-filled purses, and easily con-
vinced the senate of his innocence and good intentions. The
senate decided to send out a commission to divide the kingdom
equitably between Jugurtha and his half-brother. The result
of its labours was that Adherbal got the desert and the capital,
while Jugurtha got all the fertile part of the country, and the
commission returned home rich and happy. Jugurtha had
now only to obtain the capital, but as Adherbal refused to
fight and kept appealing to Rome, there was nothing for it but
to besiege Cirta. Numerous envoys came to Jugurtha from
the senate in the course of the siege, but he easily assured
them of his pacific intentions. As soon as he had taken the
city he put his rival to death with torture, and massacred the
entire male population, including a great number of Italian
and Roman citizens.
The senate did not feel that this course of action was
entirely meritorious, but it required the stimulus of a demo-
cratic agitation and another troublesome tribune to induce
them to declare war. The senate sent out two of its best men
in Bestia and Scaurus ; the latter especially was generally
reputed to be a veritable Aristides, for he had ventured to
protest against the former iniquities. When the Roman army
arrived, Jugurtha knew better ways than fighting. He sub-
mitted at discretion, surrendered the Roman deserters, whom
of course he did not want to keep, and a few elephants, which
he soon afterwards repurchased privately. In return he was
permitted to retain his kingdom. Once more there were
91
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
outcries at Rome, voiced by the same democratic tribune
Memmius, who insisted that Jugurtha should be summoned to
Rome to answer for his sins. Meekly but with bulging money-
bags Jugurtha arrived. As soon as Memmius began to cross-
examine him another tribune interposed his veto. During
his visit Jugurtha was able to purchase a strong party in the
senate ; he also had time to procure the assassination of an
obnoxious fellow-countryman in the city itself. This outrage,
combined with the ambition of the new consul, Spurius
Albinus, led to another declaration of war, Jugurtha himself
being allowed to go home and prepare for it. As he departed
he uttered the famous words, " Ah, Rome ! Venal city ! She
would sell herself if she could find a purchaser."
When Albinus led out the second army, he found it
utterly incapable of fighting. It was a band of cowardly
brigands, who spent their time in plundering their own pro-
vince ; and when the consul's brother conceived the spirited
project of seizing the king's treasury for himself, instead of
waiting for the more tedious and uncertain profits of bribery, he
led the Roman army into an ambush. It surrendered readily.
It was forced to go under the yoke, and agree to evacuate all
Numidia.
This was a little too much. Another tribune — in all
this period we observe the tribunes acting as the heads of
popular opposition quite in the Gracchan manner — proposed
a special inquiry to investigate the matter, and bring the
offenders to justice. Three of the worst — Spurius Albinus,
Bestia, and L. Opimius, the destroyer of G. Gracchus — were
banished, but the incorruptible Scaurus escaped condemnation
by sitting on the bench. The treaty of peace was cancelled,
and its author — following the usual Roman custom when
armies in awkward places surrendered — was given up to the
enemy.
In the third campaign the senate really tried to do its best.
Q. Metellus, the new general, belonged to the party of liberal
nobles who were in favour of moderate reform. He began
92
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
well by choosing his officers for military skill — somewhat of
an innovation. Among others he chose a brave young farmer,
G. Marius. Arrived in Africa, Metellus had first to reduce
the Roman army to order, and then, having failed to get his
enemy assassinated, marched out to fight him. Jugurtha was
beaten in battle (for the Roman army could still fight under
decent leadership), and henceforth was driven to guerilla war-
fare, in which he displayed such remarkable skill that the war
soon came to a standstill.
At this point G. Marius, who had achieved popularity and
renown through his valour, conceived the ambitious plan of
standing for the consulship. It is hard to guess how such an
audacious idea can have entered his head, for such an applica-
tion from a man of no family was entirely without precedent.
Somebody at Rome must have whispered the idea. When
he asked his consul for permission to go to Rome for the pur-
pose, Metellus was vastly diverted, and suggested that Marius
had better wait until his general's little boy was grown up, in
order that he might have a Metellus for a colleague. Probably
Marius had little sense of humour, for he did go to Rome,
just in time, and was elected consul. Moreover, a special
decree entrusted him with command of the army in Africa.
Among his officers was the young legate, L. Cornelius
Sulla, and though Marius undoubtedly displayed vigour and
competence, it was very largely the luck and diplomacy of
Sulla which procured the seizure and surrender of the Numidian
king. Marius, however, reaped the glory. Jugurtha graced
his triumph (104 B.C.), and soon afterwards perished in a
Roman dungeon.
Simultaneously with the Jugurthan war the Romans were
called upon to face a far more serious affair, one of those great
folk-wanderings from the north which occur periodically in
the course of Mediterranean history. The Cimbri and Teutons,
who may have numbered ancestors of our own among them,
came down from the shores of the Baltic, travelling with their
households in a train of waggons which took six days in
93
THE GRANDEUR. THAT WAS ROME
defiling past the onlooker. These barbarians were terrible to
the Romans, with their strange aspect, their long iron swords
and savage war-cries, their fair hair and giant stature. But
of course they were savages compared to the Romans, and
they should never have inflicted more than one defeat on
intelligent generals of disciplined armies. As it was, they had
to face mutinous legions and incompetent consuls. First they
defeated Carbo and overran Gaul ; then coming south into the
province they beat Silanus and Scaurus ; and then, united
with the Helvetians, they inflicted a frightful disaster on
Longinus, when a Roman legate had to surrender, and another
Roman army was sent under the yoke. In 105 a worse thing
happened : the great defeat of Arausio (Orange) seemed more
fatal even than Cannae in the extent of its losses. Therewas
a panic in Italy, which seemed helplessly exposed to the fury
of the northmen, but fortunately the aimless barbarians
wandered off into the west and spent their strength on the
warlike Spanish tribes.
As before, popular indignation at Rome, diverted from the
real cause of the mischief, the rotten system of cliques which
governed them, wasted its fury on individuals. Senators were
mobbed and stoned. A proconsul was actually deposed from
office. There was only one man deemed capable of dealing
with the peril — Marius, the man of the people, the triumphant
conqueror of Jugurtha. So, despite laws forbidding re-election,
•4 Marius became consul for a second time and a third — five times
consul. This was symptomatic of a changed Rome. It was,
however, necessary. Amateur generals had had a long trial.
From 104 to 100 Marius was continuously chief magistrate of
the state, as well as generalissimo of its armies. He did his
work. First he had to get his army in hand, and accustom
them to the sight of the terrible barbarians. Then he
dealt two smashing blows at the Teutons and Cimbri near
Aqus Sextis and on the Raudine Plain. It was the mis-
fortune of the Roman system of imperium that no general could
x attain to eminence in war without at the same time acquiring
94
LAST CENTURY OF, THE REPUBLIC
political importance. Hence Marius in 100 B.C. found himself
absolutely first in the Roman state without education or even
common sense in politics. He presents a pathetic figure in the
turbulent world of Roman statecraft, a war-scarred veteran, the
indubitable saviour of Rome, called upon to play the part of a
statesman, and yet a mere puppet in the hands of unscrupulous
intriguers. First he fell into the hands of two shameless
demagogues — Saturninus and Glaucia — who used him to
revive the Gracchan revolution. Marius became consul for
the sixth time, and a new reform programme was drawn up,
including an agrarian law to divide the land conquered from
the Cimbri, and incidentally all the land they had conquered,
into small holdings for the Marian veterans, Latins and
Italians alike. Marius was to have personal charge of the
distribution, and this task would make him master of Rome for
many years to come. Secondly, there was to be a still further
cheapening of corn ; and, thirdly, new colonies were to be
founded and the Italian allies to have a share in them. Of
course there was violent opposition. The senate tried all its
old stratagems, tribunician veto, portents, and lastly bludgeons.
To meet the latter, Marius whistled his veteran soldiers to his
side, and the " Appuleian Laws " were carried, with the
addition of a very obnoxious clause that each senator was to
take an oath of allegiance to the new legislation within five days
on pain of forfeiting his seat. Q. Metellus alone had the
courage to prefer exile.
Then, it seems, the senate found it necessary to beguile
the great general over to the side of aristocracy. Marius was
a child in their hands. He actually boggled at taking the oath
to his own laws, and added the remarkable proviso, "So far as
they are valid." Saturninus and Glaucia in their turn tried
violence, and Marius led the forces of the senate against them.
There was a battle in the forum, the demagogues were slain,
and four magistrates of the Roman people put to death with-
out trial. Once more reaction had triumphed. For the time
being Marius was politically defunct.
95
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
But one side of his work was lasting- and fraught with
momentous consequences for the Roman state. It was Marius,
4 the first professional general, who formed the first professional
army. We noticed that Greece, even before the end of the fifth
century, had already begun to use paid and trained soldiers,
partly owing to the unwillingness of her comfortable or busy
citizens to engage in annual campaigns, but still more because
it was found that the more highly trained and better disciplined
mercenaries were far more efficient at their business. So for
many centuries Rome had now been the only power in the
Mediterranean world to rely upon a citizen militia. That
citizen militia had indeed conquered the world ; but certainly
in dealing with the trained troops of Pyrrhus and Hannibal,
the Roman forces had always begun with disaster and slowly
been schooled to their trade by defeat. So it was now in the
Jugurthan and Cimbric wars: the generals had to train their
armies in the face of the enemy, and while that is no doubt
the best training ground it is terribly dangerous and expensive.
It implies, too, an almost inexhaustible stock of recruits to
. fall back upon. With the decline of Italian agriculture and
the growth of city life the stock of recruits was no longer
inexhaustible. Moreover the art of war was becoming more
intricate. Rome found it necessary to appoint a genuine
soldier for her general against Jugurtha in view of the
disastrous failures of aristocratic amateurs. In the same way
Marius found it necessary to overhaul the Roman fighting
machine, and by the end of his five years of successive
consulship he had organised a professional army on much the
same system as our own. Rome like England required a
highly trained expeditionary force and behind it a large
reserve. The principal change instituted by Marius seemed
at first a small one and required no legislative sanction.
Hitherto the army had consisted only of the propertied classes,
the infantry of those who could afford a suit of arms, and the
cavalry of the richest citizens who could maintain one of the
state horses. The minimum property for a Roman soldier
96
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
is said to have been £115. The poorest had originally formed
a light-armed support, the three middle classes were the line,
and the richest the cavalry. But the three classes of the
line had by now come to be drawn up not according to
property but according to length of service. This was the
traditional battle formation of the Roman infantry maniples :
Triarii | | | | I I I I I I
. — . i . . i i i • i > i • • • '"•
Principes
Hastati
with the cavalry upon the wings. But social changes were
changing the army. As wealth increased and the gulf
between rich and poor grew wider the comfortable burgesses
were no longer obedient or willing soldiers. Bad discipline
— a monstrous violation of the old Roman spirit — had begun
to appear in the ranks as early as the Macedonian wars. In
the Jugurthan wars it was deplorably rife. The equestrian
class as the richest was also the most mutinous : as early as
the third century the knights had refused to work in the
trenches alongside of the legionaries. By 140 B.C. they had N
ceased to act as a military force and become merely a grade
of honour, or rather of income, in the state, though the younger
knights continued to form a corps of noble guards to the
general. As for the army as a whole, the theory down to the x""
time of Marius was still that of the annual spring campaign ;
each consul levied his own army for a specific purpose.
This levy had become more and more difficult. The simple
innovation which Marius introduced was that in the process
of holding his levy he began by asking for volunteers and
enrolling those first. There was generally a distinct promise
of rewards on discharge. Thus instead of the moneyed
classes Marius filled his ranks with the poorest and hardiest
inhabitants of Rome and Italy. Of course the obligation to
serve still remained part of the condition of certain subject
G 97
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
peoples. The auxiliary ranks were now supplied by foreign
experts — cavalry from the Numidian deserts or the Ligurian
hills, slingers from the Balearic Islands, and presently archers
from Crete. Having thus professionalised his army Marius
proceeded to abolish all distinctions in the ranks. All the
men of the line now had a uniform equipment supplied by
the state, and instead of a bewildering variety of insignia
all the legionaries now fought under that emblem destined
to be carried in victory to the four corners of Europe — the
silver eagle. The eagle was the standard of the legion and
it was regarded as sacred. In camp it rested in a special
shrine and terrible was the disgrace attaching to its loss in
battle. Hitherto legions had been gathered for each campaign
and disbanded at its close. Now a legion had a permanent
existence, a fixed number, a tradition and an esprit de corps
of its own. It was now a larger unit of 6000 men ; for while
the maniple or company of 120 men still remained, the
maniples were grouped into cohorts or battalions, which now
became the regular tactical unit, and ten cohorts formed the
legion.
Beside the body-armour consisting of helmet, cuirass, and
cylindrical shield,* the uniform equipment of the legionary
included the pilum, a short heavy javelin for throwing (it
is interesting to notice that whereas Marius had the point
loosely attached to the shaft so as to break off in the shield
or body of the enemy, Julius Csesar actually invented what
may fairly be called a " Dum-Dum pilum " with a soft nose
for stopping the rush of barbarians), and the short broad-
bladed sword f which had been copied from the Spanish
swordsmen in the Second Punic War. The latter was a very
handy little weapon only about thirty inches long including
the hilt, with two edges as well as a point, though the thrust
was always advocated in preference to the cut. Marius now
introduced a new drill which included lessons in fencing given
in the first instance by masters from the gladiatorial schools.
* Plate 12, I Plate 13,
•7 O
PLATE XIII. SCABBARD OF LEGIONARY SWORD
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
Though bloodshed be abhorrent to the learned, many a scholar
would like to have witnessed the combat between the Roman
gladius and the Cimbrian claymore. It must be repeated
that the Roman maniple, unlike the close Greek phalanx,
stood in open order with a six-foot square of space for each
man so that there was room for individual prowess in swords-
manship. Lastly, Marius still further professionalised his
army by introducing a system of bounties on discharge which
made the army a really attractive career for poor citizens.
He promised them each a farm at the end of the war and
his example was followed by other generals. In fact a
veteran soldier came to expect a handsome pension on
retirement.
It is surely unnecessary to emphasise the meaning of all
this. An army was now a trained corps against which no
levy of recruits could stand for an instant. Hitherto it had
been the chief guarantee against usurpation by a general that
new armies could be summoned from the soil at any time.
Now there was a weapon in the hands of a successful general
against which the feeble safeguards of the republican consti-
tution were powerless. As with the first trained army in
English history, the general of such a force became master
of the destinies of the state so long as the allegiance of the
soldiers was personal rather than patriotic. The Roman
soldier's allegiance had always been personal and now it
became more so. Moreover the Roman constitution had
never sought to distinguish military from civil power. Hence
that day in 100 B.C., when the Appuleian code was carried
under threat of the legions of Marius, was of evil omen for
the constitution. Less than twenty years were to elapse
before a Roman army entered Rome in triumph to support
the political enactments of Sulla. It is in reality hence-
forward one long state of civil war, open or concealed, between
rival generals, until at last a permanent military monarchy was
established. It only required a bold free spirit like that of
Julius Caesar to discern the real facts of the case. Marius,
99
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
as we have already seen, had not sufficient intellect to play
a political part with success ; Sulla attained what was
really a monarchical position but retired when he had won
it. Pompeius never had the courage to face the situation.
Caesar had, but he was sacrificed to the republican tradition.
Finally the diplomatic Augustus realised the long inevitable
fact.
Henceforth, then, it is merely a question of who shall be
Emperor of Rome. The causes of the end of Rome's in-
coherent constitutional system, called by us a Republic, are
already clear. There are the constitutional causes — above all
the inelasticity of the Roman system, which made legitimate
reform impossible, provided no machinery to express the will
of the people, and rendered it inevitable that rioting should
accompany every change. It was a constitution essentially
municipal and the tribunate was the centre of mischief. Then
there are the economic causes, now working more banefully
than ever, and causing the decay of the agricultural population,
the rise of a dangerous uneducated city proletariat, and the
corruption of the governing aristocracy. There was the poli-
tical fact that the government of a vast ill-organised empire
destroyed the Republican spirit and further increased corrup-
tion, while it denationalised the Roman temper. Lastly, there
is the military cause, namely, the professionalisation of the
army, putting excessive power into the hands of the general
and replacing patriotism by esprit de corps.
It strikes the onlooker that no one of these evils, nor even
the accumulation of them, need have been fatal to the republi-
can system if there had been a genuine spirit of patriotic
enthusiasm determined to overcome them. For instance, if
the great men of Rome had been loyal and patriotic there is
no reason why the excessive power of the generals should have
led to high treason. And again, though the provincial system
was misbegotten it might have been corrected and reformed.
But it was the spirit that failed. Was not that just because
' Roman power had outstripped Roman civilisation ? For the
100
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
upper-class Roman, faith was dead or dying, and there were no
high interests of the mind to replace it. Fighting was their
sole inherited interest and their tastes were correspondingly
brutal and bloody. The last agony of the Republic in the
period we are now considering is painful enough, but the wise
will surely regard it as the period in which a new and much
more hopeful order of things was gradually evolved.
SULLA
On the extinction of Marius there arose Sulla. Sulla was
the aristocrat of talent, almost of genius, who tried to save the
state by reaction. He tried, vainly and foolishly enough, to
bolster up the rickety structure of senatorial ascendancy, but
had not the patience or the wisdom to attempt even that with
any thoroughness. L. Cornelius Sulla was of the class of men
to which Alcibiades and Alexander belong, but an inferior
specimen of the class. Though of noble birth he had risen
from poverty and obscurity by his own talents. He was clever
— and he did the most foolish acts in history. He was hand-
some— and his face in later life is described as "a mulberry
speckled with meal." He was brave and successful in war ;
half lion and half fox, they said, and the fox was the more
dangerous of the two. He secured the affections of his soldiers
by giving them free licence to plunder or to murder unpopular
officers. He was a rake and a gambler, reckless of bloodshed
as he was careless of praise or blame, and he had that fatal
belief in a star which has led better men than him to follow
will-o'-the-wisps. He might have stood where Caesar stands.
He would have made a very typical bad emperor, and whatever
it was that made him decline to be one, it was not patriotism.
He was as cultured as Nero, and showed it by sacking Athens,
plundering Delphi, and looting a famous library. Like Nero,
but unlike the majority of his fellow-countrymen, he had a
sense of humour.
After the shelving of Marius and the destruction of his
democratic associates the governing clique pursued its old
101
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
course of headlong folly. For one thing the aristocrats soon
fell out with the capitalists, which is always an unwise thing
for aristocrats to do. The equestrian jury-courts established
by Gracchus acted with brutal simplicity on behalf of their tax-
gathering and tax-farming brothers against whatever honest
governors proceeded from the senate. Men were condemned
for honest administration in those days. For another thing
the bitter cry of the Italian " allies," who bore all the hard
knocks of the Roman service, and in return got nothing but
servitude, was persistently and contemptuously ignored. In
95 a consular law flatly prohibited them from ever claiming
the franchise. But presently there came forward a new re-
former in M. Livius Drusus. This remarkable man might be
described as a third Gracchus, only that he saw the futility of
the so-called democracy of Rome, and adopted other means to
attain his ends. On the one hand he was a champion of the
senate against the knights, and on the other hand he was
resolved to give the Italians their rights. He seems to have
promoted a widespread secret organisation among the Italians.
He then proposed four measures : the inevitable vote-catching
corn law and agrarian law, the jury-courts to be restored to
the senate, the senate for that purpose to be enlarged by the
inclusion of three hundred knights, and, lastly, citizenship for the
allies. The first three were carried, not without violence, but the
fourth was his stumbling-block. The Italians were by now so
clamorous that civil war was inevitable if it were refused, and
no man denied the justice of their claim. But neither justice
nor expediency had any power to move the dead weight of
senatorial conservatism. Drusus was murdered and his laws
repealed. That was the signal for the long and terrible Social
War which completed the ruin of Italy and caused grave alarm
for the very existence of Rome herself. In the course of this
struggle and in fear for her existence Rome yielded in fact, if
not openly, to the demand of the Italians. Some states re-
ceived the franchise as a reward for fidelity and others as a
bait for submission. By a law of 89 all Italians who applied
102
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
to the praetor within sixty days received the citizenship, and
this belated concession had its effect. The face of Italy
had been covered with mourning to secure it. Even so the
governing clique succeeded in nullifying the political value of
the concession by confining the Italians along with the Roman
freedmen to a few of the tribes so that their votes were almost
useless.
The pressure of this war and of the great Mithradatic war
which began simultaneously in Asia led to a serious economic
crisis at Rome. Debt and usury were the symptoms, and
when a praetor tried to meet it by reviving the old laws against
usury he was murdered in his priestly robes at sacrifice. Now
we begin to hear the ominous cry of "Novae tabulae" — the
clean slate for debtors. A popular orator named Sulpicius
Rufus, whose programme included the exclusion of all bank-
rupts from the senate, protected his valuable person with a
bodyguard of 3000 hired roughs, and organised a mock senate
of 300 high-spirited young bloods. Then, since Sulla with
his army threatened opposition, he passed a decree giving
the command of the great army destined to fight Mithra-
dates to the old Marius. During the Social War both these
generals had held command with some success, but on the
whole the reputation of Marius had declined while that of
Sulla had increased. Without hesitation Sulla now marched
his army into Rome, and won a battle in the streets of the
city. Sulpicius was of course executed, his head was nailed
to the rostra, and Marius escaped under circumstances of
romantic adventure. Sulla was thus in the year 88 completely
master of Rome.
At this moment his real ambition was for more fighting.
Mithradates, King of Pontus,* was then in full career of rebel-
lion against the Roman dominion in Asia, where 80,000
Roman traders and money-lenders were murdered in a sudden
mutiny. Sulla saw in Mithradates a worthy foeman, and much
preferred glory on the fields of Asia to Roman politics; and
* Plate 3,3, No. i.
103
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
besides, his army was clamouring for plunder. So he hastily
flung out a series of constitutional reforms designed to re-
store the senate to more than its ancient predominance, and
then set out for the East, heedless or ignorant of the fact that
he had not really changed anything. On the contrary he had
left at Rome in sole charge the new consul, Cinna, the worst
and most dangerous of all the demagogues. Sulla — most
innocent of reprobates — seems to have fancied that an oath
to obey his constitution would restrain such a man at such
a time.
Consequently as soon as his back was turned a fresh revo-
lution broke out. Cinna also brought an army to Rome and
invited Marius to return. Then the old general, furious with
all his disappointments, began a fearful debauch of bloodshed.
Every distinguished senator left in Rome, including statesmen
like L. Caesar, soldiers like Catulus, orators like Antonius and
Crassus, were butchered by his slaves and their heads displayed
in the forum. In 86 Marius gained the goal of his ambition,
that seventh consulship which had been promised him long
ago by a prophet. In the same year he died. Now for four
years Cinna ruled as monarch at Rome. Year after year he
assumed the consulship and nominated the other magistrates
at his own choice without the formality of election. He re-
pealed the laws of Sulla, equalised all the citizens in the tribes,
and reduced all debts by 75 per cent. It is the last measure
which is truly typical of Roman democracy. Meanwhile, of
course, the reckoning was in preparation across the seas.
Sulla was winning glorious victories in Greece and Asia, and
at length in 84, drove Mithradates to surrender temporarily,
Cinna, who does not seem to have understood that a Roman
army belonged not to the republic but to its general, audaciously
set out to supersede Sulla, and was murdered by the troops.
Sulla, having offered terms which the government very
foolishly declined, came home in 83 after five years' absence
bearing not peace but a sword. He had five veteran legions
of his own, the exiled aristocrats joined him, and among them
104
PLATE XIV. GN. POMPEIUS MAGNUS
Tryde
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
a young man called Pompeius with three more legions. The
lead of the democratic party had now fallen into the hands of
a young Marius, and he having no troops to oppose the return-
ing veterans decided to join the Samnite rebels who remained
unconquered from the Social War. Before leaving the city
they ordered a final and still more bloody massacre of the
surviving aristocrats; practically all the men of distinction
left in the city suffered death. Sulla had to fight 40,000
Samnites at the Colline Gate of Rome, and after a desperate
struggle was victorious. The young Marius committed suicide.
Thus Sulla was once more master of Rome. His 8000 Samnite
prisoners were slaughtered in the Circus. Of the Roman
democrats, 80 senators, 3600 equites, and over 2000 private
citizens were proscribed, and their heads nailed up in the
forum. In Spain, Sertorius, an honest and valorous democrat,
maintained a gallant struggle by the aid of a miraculous deer,
and a native Spanish army trained on the Roman model, until
at last he fell by treachery.
For two years Sulla was monarch at Rome. For the
purpose he invented a sort of revival of the obsolete dictator-
ship, without limit of time and without a colleague. If we
care for the term, Sulla was at that time as much " Emperor "
as Augustus. He enacted a whole constitution of his own —
which it is scarcely necessary to recount since scarcely any thing
of it survived — all destined to put the senate on its throne
again, and then simply abdicated and retired into private life.
I think he was bored with Rome and politics. It is generally
admitted that he had a sense of humour. It was a very
foolish thing to do. But Sulla's star was with him and he
died in his bed. His dying moments were comforted by the
apparition of his deceased wife (he had had five) and son, who
invited him to join them in the land of peace and bliss beyond
the grave.
Sulla was hardly dead before another consul had marched
against Rome with his army and suffered defeat in the city.
But these were mere episodes. The streets of the sacred city
105
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
were in a perpetual state of war : every serious politician had
to organise his gang of roughs, and when the very senate-
house was burnt down in one such encounter it only seemed an
excessive display of political zeal. Of constitutional govern-
ment there was little pretence. The seas were swarming with
pirates, no longer isolated rovers who preyed upon commerce,
but an organised pirate-state with head-quarters in Cilicia, and
a great fleet consisting of all the broken men and desperate
outlaws of the unhappy Mediterranean world. They sailed the
high seas in fleets under admirals who voyaged in state like
princes. For their homes they had impregnable citadels
among the creeks of the Cilician and Dalmatian coasts where
they stored their families and their plunder. They were not
afraid to march inland to sack a city or loot a rich temple.
Commerce at sea was ruined, even the food-supply of the
capital was occasionally cut off. On land and even in Italy
things were not much better. All through Republican history
(but seldom afterwards) we hear of risings among the slaves
of Italy. Now, under the plantation system, the inaccessible
Apennine highlands were swarming with desperate runaways
who constantly committed minor acts of brigandage. In 73
they found a leader in Spartacus, the gladiator who was
said to be of royal descent in Thrace. Starting as a mere
handful the band swelled in the course of a few months to
40,000. Roman armies one after another and ten in all
marched against them in vain. Two consuls were defeated,
many eagles were captured, Italy was at their mercy.
Respectable towns like Thurii and Nola were seized, their
prisoners were crucified like slaves or forced with grim irony
to fight one another to the death like gladiators. Thus the
most frightful form of civil war was devastating Italy. It
was necessary to raise an army of eight legions to crush the
slaves, and the command was entrusted to Marcus Crassus,
who even then had to decimate a legion before he could get
his cowardly troops to stand and fight. After several stubborn
battles, and aided by the want of discipline which was even
1 06
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
more conspicuous among the slaves than among the Romans,
Crassus accomplished his task. Six thousand crucified slaves
who lined the road from Capua to Rome testified to the
restoration of order.
Abroad matters were little better. The war against
Mithradates, which had provided so many Roman triumphs
and had so often been proclaimed at an end, actually lasted
for twenty-five years, and its duration was due rather to the
ineptitude of the government than to the prowess of the
unmilitary Asiatics. In Spain it took ten years to defeat
Sertorius with his native troops, and even then the result was
only accomplished by assassination. If a Hannibal had
entered Italy in these latter days the state could not have
survived. But there was only one military power of any con-
sequence left in the world in those days, the Parthians. Here
there were half-hellenised despots ruling over tribes of warriors
only lately descended from the Caucasian and Armenian
highlands, and still nursing a fierce mountain spirit though they
occupied the rich plains of Mesopotamia. Crassus, the victor
over the slaves, was sent to fight them with a great army, but
the millionaire displayed wretched ignorance of strategy and
especially of the perils of Eastern warfare. He blundered on
into the wilderness and tried to meet the terrible horse-bowmen
and mail-clad lancers of the East with his legions in a hollow
square. The result was the great disaster of Carrhae in 53, a
defeat which amid all the shameful ignominies of this period
rankled continually owing to the loss of the eagles and the
tragic fate of the leader. Marcus Crassus himself was an almost
wholly repulsive character, who had amassed a fortune, colossal
even in those days of millionaires, by the most discreditable
method. The foundations of his millions had been laid by
speculating in the property of the victims of Sulla's proscrip-
tions. He had been a slave-trainer on a large scale and at one
time he had organised a private fire-brigade which he used for
acquiring house-property cheaply by blackmail. By lending
money to the young spendthrifts of the aristocracy he obtained
107
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
great influence at Rome, and indeed figures in the wretched
politics of his day as a statesman on equality with really great
men like Caesar and Pompeius. But he had no policy and
was only of importance through his wealth and influence.
POMPEIUS AND
So we come to the final phase of the Republic — the great
struggle between the giants Caesar and Pompeius, with figures
like Cicero, Cato, and Clodius in the background. I do not
propose to linger over this period, because on the one hand it
is so thoroughly well known as the period of fullest evidence in
all Roman history, and therefore would require a volume for
adequate treatment, and on the other hand because it has been
such a battle-ground for partisan historians of all times that it
is difficult in such a summary as this to do justice without
detailed argument.
Gneius Pompeius the Great * had first come into prominence
as a supporter of Sulla. He was of high official family and was
a born soldier. That is really the secret of his career. Like
Marius he was a general and no statesman, but he was a very
great general, and one of the few honest men, one might almost
say one of the few gentlemen, of his period. The tragedy of his
life was to be born in such a period. He had disdained the
minor offices of state, and relying on his military renown but in
defiance of the law, he stood for the consulship in 70 B.C. As
the official aristocracy objected he went over to the democrats,
and allied himself with Crassus. These two, elected under
threat of Pompeius's army, straightway repealed most of the
Sullan constitution, and restored the balance of power to the
knights and the assembly. At the end of the year Pompeius
retired into private life. This was characteristic of him; he
was capable of grandiose schemes but he lived in fear of
public opinion, and he was really moved when orators spoke of
illegality. Meanwhile there was a loud demand for some
comprehensive scheme of attack upon the pirates. No ordinary
* Plate 14.
1 08
PLATE XV. BUST OF CICERO
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
consular command would do. Even the Roman senate was by
this time convinced that it was useless to send legions and
cavalry against pirate ships. Accordingly a Gabinian Law of
67 gave to Pompeius a command of unprecedented magnitude.
Millions of money were voted to him, he was to be supreme
over all the seas and all the coasts for fifty miles inland for three
years, with a staff of twenty-five legates, and all governors were
to obey his orders. The price of corn fell at once : Pompeius
discovered abundance of it in the granaries of the Sicilian corn
trust. Then he began a systematic drive of the seas, and in
about three months had cleared them. Thousands of pirates
were caught and crucified. All this made Pompeius the most
powerful and the most dangerous man in Rome.
Next the tribune Manilius, in whose favour that rising
novus homo the friend of our youth, Marcus Tullius Cicero,
pronounced an oration, gave to Pompeius another huge com-
mission against Mithradates, the irrepressible rebel of Asia.
Pompeius succeeded where all his predecessors, from Sulla to
Lucullus, had failed, and the wicked old king was driven to
suicide. Then Pompeius proceeded to organise the East like
an Alexander, but always in perfect loyalty to Rome.
While Pompeius was absent the so-called democracy, which
mostly consisted of hired ruffians in the pay of discontented
nobles, ruled the streets of the city. Among the young nobles
who took this side was one more dissolute and more foppish
than the rest, a notorious adulterer and spendthrift, Gaius
Julius Caesar. Though of the highest birth — the goddess Venus
by her marriage with the father of ^Eneas was among his
ancestors — he was also by lineage associated with the demo-
cracy. His aunt was the wife of Marius, and his wife was a
daughter of Cinna. He began his public career quaintly
enough as pontifex maximus. When Julia the widow of
Marius died, young Caesar had the audacity to display images
and utter an oration in praise of Marius. This, as was intended,
set all the gossips talking, and his amazing extravagance kept
him well in the public eye. On one occasion he exhibited three
109
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
hundred gladiators in silver armour, although he was known to
be penniless. Probably Crassus was his financier all along.
At this time there was another of the frequently recurring
financial crises at Rome. Everybody was deeply in debt, and
loud rose the cry for the clean slate, as part of the democratic
programme — the only intelligible part. This was the cause of
the famous conspiracy of Catiline, who, if Cicero may be trusted,
proposed to seize and burn Rome by the aid of the discontented
Sullan colonists in Etruria. Both Caesar and Crassus are said
to have favoured the plot, but it is exceedingly difficult to see
what a large owner of Roman house property had to gain by it.
Cicero was the consul for the year 63, and though it is the
fashion just now to sneer at Cicero, he seems to have displayed
courage and promptitude in dealing with the conspirators. Un-
fortunately his arrest and execution of Catiline was technically
illegal. Cicero himself, as a parvenu, was naturally an aristo-
crat, and his policy, though futile, was intelligible. Briefly, it
was to unite the senate with the capitalist class in what he
called the "union of the orders" against the democratic
elements of disorder. Pompeius came home from the East to
find the conspiracy crushed. He and his legions were not
wanted. With incredible folly and ingratitude the senate, led
by Cicero, refused even to grant the lands he had promised to
his veterans.
Caesar had gone as praetor to Spain, and there began to
win military renown — much to the surprise of his friends — and
money. He wanted the consulship for the next year, and there-
fore required the support of Pompeius, who had now been driven
away from the aristocratic party to which he belonged by
sympathy. Crassus came in as Caesar's creditor and as the
necessary millionaire. Thus was formed the Triumvirate of the
year 60, and in 59 Caesar became consul. By this time he had
conceived high, possibly the highest, ambitions. Marius and
Sulla, not to mention Alexander and ./Eneas, had always been
much in his mind. For the present his object was to acquire
a lasting office and secure the allegiance of a trained army,
no
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
Caesar's colleague in the consulship was a certain Bibulus, who
tried to stop the dangerous proceedings of the democrat by
seeing omens in the heavens every day, but no one, least of all
Caesar, took any notice of him. The only serious opposition
came from Cato the Younger, who represented the genuine and
respectable aristocracy. This Cato was a queer anachronism at
Rome, an honest man. He was also, if biography may be
trusted, a bigot and a priggish eccentric. He was the sort of
man to go about Africa without a hat, or to sit on the judicial
bench without shoes, because such was the mos maiorum. He
tried to revive the ways which had been styled old-fashioned
in his grandfather. Nevertheless he was upright and brave, a
good soldier, and a man with a clear though impossible policy.
Once again it is the fault of rhetorical history that all the good
men of Rome appear as prigs and eccentrics. This man most
courageously opposed his veto to the proceedings of Caesar,
though he was hustled and beaten by the democratic hirelings,
then organised under that most notorious scoundrel Clodius.
But the result was that though Caesar's laws might pass, they
could afterwards be declared illegal, and Caesar would be liable
to prosecution as soon as he became a private citizen. How
ever, he had no immediate intention of becoming a private
citizen. He secured the province of Gaul for five years with
four legions.
Now Gaul was not reckoned an important province. It
was only the peaceful plain of Upper Italy to which the senate
had added Narbonensian Gaul, a southern strip of France,
chiefly considered as a step on the road to Spain. Four
legions was a small consular army for those days; no one
supposed that he would have much fighting. But either Caesar
had received secret intelligence or else he had very good luck.
At the outset he was called to deal with a great immigration
of the barbarian Helvetii, who were migrating out of Switzer-
land into Gaul and threatening the province.
The conservatives at Rome maintained that Caesar's con-
quests in Gaul were the result of wanton aggression — cheap
in
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
victories over inoffensive savages, wholly unjustifiable and
unauthorised. At this point it is scarcely possible to avoid
entering upon the much-debated question of Caesar's real
character. For orthodox Romans Caesar was the founder of
the empire, a person not only of divine descent, but himself
divine. All emperors took his name, until that surname of
Caesar, once a mere nickname, came, in half the languages of
Europe, to be synonymous with " Emperor." For the Middle
Ages he stood with Constantine, who christianised the Empire,
and Charlemagne, who revived it, as the founder of that
divinely instituted polity which shared with the Church God's
viceregency on earth. In the eyes of Dante, Caesar stood very
near to Christ, for the poet peoples the frozen heart of his
Inferno with three tormented figures who writhe in the very
jaws of Cocytus. Along with Judas Iscariot are the two mur-
derers of Julius Caesar. Though the Renaissance stripped him
of much of his legendary greatness, Caesar remained for the
men of Shakespeare's day the embodiment of imperial pride.
Shakespeare himself was too great an artist to make any of
his characters more or less than human, but it is evidently
Brutus who has the sympathies of the dramatist. In the
French Revolution, again, Brutus and Cassius were heroes
and glorious tyrannicides. The reaction against early nine-
teenth-century liberalism brought Caesar once more into honour,
and Mommsen, the prophet of Caesarism, makes him the hero
of his great history. To Mommsen Caesar was almost divine,
the clear-sighted and magnanimous " saviour " who alone saw
the true path out of the disorders of his city. From this view
again we are apparently now in reaction once more. To the
latest critics the greatness of Caesar and of Mommsen are alike
abhorrent, and Signer Ferrero depicts his greatest fellow-
countryman as an unscrupulous demagogue who blundered
into renown through treachery and bloodshed.
The historical principle by which this result is attained is
rather typical of certain modern critical methods. Since the
account of the Gallic Wars was written chiefly by Caesar
112
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
himself, and Caesar is by hypothesis -a scoundrel, the history
of these wars must be found by reading between the lines of
Caesar's account, putting the most unfavourable construction
upon everything and preferring any evidence to his, even if it
be that of two centuries later. If any gaps or inconsistencies
are noticed they must be treated as concealing defeats or acts
of treachery. Written in this spirit, the story of the Gallic
Wars is a very black one for Caesar and Rome. Yet unbiassed
readers must generally admit that Caesar was a very careful
and on the whole an honest historian. The accusation that
he was capable of relentless cruelty springs from his own ad-
missions. It was in the Roman character to despise life, and
when Caesar thought that a rebellious tribe needed a lesson he
did not hesitate to massacre defenceless women and children
or to lay waste miles of territory with fire and sword. But,
on the other hand, his preference was for clemency and
justice.
Without making him a demigod, we ought to be able to
see his greatness. As a young man his ardour of soul, work-
ing in a debased society without ideals, made him simply
more extravagant and more foppish than the spendthrifts
and rakes who surrounded him. Doubtless the scandalous
Suetonius has embellished the story of his early follies. Many
of his youthful escapades were, one suspects, carefully designed
to bring him into notice. It is probable that from a very early
age he was ambitious, and his family connections clearly
marked out his career as a democrat. He had the failure of
Sulla before his eyes. The greatness of his character lay
chiefly in an instinctive hatred for muddle and pretence. He
could not fail to see the hopeless confusion into which the
Roman state had fallen. From the first, I think, he was
aiming at power for himself in order to put things straight.
Whether self or country came first in his calculations, it is
hard, perhaps impossible, to decide ; but the historian is not
necessarily a cynic when he demands strong proof of altruism
in the world of politics. To obtain power the democratic side
H 113
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
was the only possible one, for the nobles stood for the pre-
dominance only of their class. Crassus was necessary to
Caesar as his banker and creditor until he had acquired a
fortune for himself by conquest. Pompeius was the foremost
soldier of the day, and it is probable that Caesar deliberately
sought to climb over the shoulders of Pompeius into monarchy.
He saw — he could not help seeing, for it was written plainly
in the history of the past century — that for power two things
were necessary, the support of the mob in the forum and the
backing of a veteran army. At the time when Caesar got
Gaul for his province there was a fresh movement towards
imperial expansion. Foreign conquest afforded some relief
for the chagrins of internal politics. By it Marius, Sulla, and
Pompeius had become powerful. If Caesar wanted to eclipse
them all, he must present Rome with a new province, the
most powerful of all bribes. It was in this spirit that he set
out for Gaul. If his ulterior motive was selfish it is certain
that he threw himself heart and soul, with all the burning
energy of which his tireless spirit was capable, into the work
of conquest and civilisation.
And what a work it was ! Archae-
ology is now beginning to prove to
history that the so-called barbarians
were by no means always savages.
Even the "naked woad-stained" Britons
had their arts and industries and politi-
cal systems. The Gauls, when Caesar
attacked them, were well on the road to
civilisation. Druidism was a declining
force, town-life was beginning, and
there was even a fairly artistic coinage.
The Gallic pottery is by no means
destitute of beauty. As soldiers the
Gauls showed many of the qualities of their descendants,
a devoted impetuosity in the charge, coupled with a lack of
tenacity in resistance which always cost them dear. Much of
114
Gallic Pottery
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
Csesar's success was due to his skill in dividing them against
themselves, but many of his difficulties arose from their fickle
disposition. Mommsen, like a true Bismarckian German, has
a striking comparison of the ancient ^~ — ,
Gallic Celt with the modern Irishman.
" On the eve," he says, " of parting
from this remarkable nation, we may
be allowed to call attention to the fact
that in the accounts of the ancients
as to the Celts on the Loire and the Gallic Pottery
Seine we find almost every one of the
characteristic traits which we are accustomed to recognise as
marking the Irish. Every feature reappears : the laziness in
the culture of the fields ; the delight in tippling and brawling ;
the ostentation . . . the droll humour ... the hearty delight
in singing and reciting the deeds of past ages, and the most
decided talent for rhetoric and poetry; the curiosity — no
trader was allowed to pass before he had told in the open
street what he knew, or did not know, in the shape of news —
and the extravagant credulity which acted on such accounts
. . . the childlike piety which sees in the priest a father and
asks him for advice in all things" (this, by the way, was
apparently a characteristic of the contemporary Germans also),
" the unsurpassed fervour of national feeling, and the closeness
with which those who are fellow-countrymen cling together
almost like one family in opposition to the stranger; the
inclination to rise in revolt under the first chance leader that
presents himself, but at the same time the utter incapacity to
preserve a self-reliant courage equally remote from presump-
tion and pusillanimity, to perceive the right time for waiting and
for striking, to obtain or even barely to tolerate any organisa-
tion, any sort of fixed military or political discipline. It is, and
remains, at all times and places the same indolent and poetical,
irresolute and fervid, inquisitive, credulous, amiable, clever, but
— from a political point of view — thoroughly useless nation ; and
therefore its fate has been always and everywhere the same."
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
The internal politics of Gaul seem to have been marked
by a division between two parties, one the conservative
party of the aristocratic knights, the other a nationalist
and popular faction. Caesar used these divisions for the
furtherance of his scheme of conquest. He was not only a
consummate general with an instinct for strategic points and
huge combinations, but he was also a superb regimental officer
in the making of soldiers. By the end of his ten years he had
forged a small but invincible army devoted to his interests
and entirely confident in his leadership. Personally, moreover,
the Roman debauchee was the best soldier in the army.
Physically he was a stranger to weariness or fatigue. He
could travel immense distances with incredible rapidity, alone
on horseback, or with a handful of followers. He seemed
ubiquitous. In the battle, when his men wavered, he would
leap down into the ranks, sword in hand, or snatch the
standard from the hand of a centurion and fight among the
foremost. No detail of fortification or commissariat escaped
him, and he, more than any one else, showed the power of
engineering in warfare. In the supreme battle against
Pompeius he even carried his devotion to the spade beyond
reasonable limits when he tried to circumvallate the much
larger camp of his enemies. One of his most surprising
exploits was when half Gaul, supposed to be pacified, rose in
sudden revolt under Vercingetorix. With a much smaller
army he chased the rebels into the fortress of Alesia, neglect-
ing for the time all communication with his base, and fully
aware that a still larger army would soon advance to the relief
of the besieged. He therefore entrenched himself outside
the gates of the city and kept off the relieving force with one
hand while he continued the siege with the other. But while
he was capable of brilliant strokes of audacity like this, he
was also a cold and cautious organiser of victory, ready to
meet his enemies on their own ground and with their own
weapons.
In this great war, which ended in the conquest of Gaul,
116
PLATE XVII. TEMPLE OF VESTA, TIVOI.I
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
Caesar's expeditions to Britain were mere episodes which have
been greatly exaggerated in the traditional histories of our
schools. They were summer raids, like his dash across the
Rhine, intended for a warning to the barbarians of the hinter-
land ; for it seems that communication to and fro across the
channel was continuous. It is probable enough that the per-
suasions of the Roman traders who swarmed after the eagles
across Gaul had their influence also. Undoubtedly the Romans
of this generation were keenly alive to commercial openings,
and always on the search for mines, real or imaginary. Further,
we cannot deny that Csesar in all his undertakings had one
eye upon his political position in Rome itself, and the "con-
quest of Britain," that almost legendary corner of the earth,
concealed in boreal mists and embosomed in the ever-flowing
Ocean river, would be a sensational achievement calculated to
outshine the Oriental triumphs of Pompeius. One cannot but
place among the extravagances of hero-worship Mommsen's
belief that Csesar had a prophetic insight into the true nature
of the " German Peril " for Rome. When Caesar took over
the Gallic province there was no tremendous German menace.
There had always been occasional irruptions of the barbarians
from across the Rhine, and a steady German penetration of the
Netherlands. Caesar did not lay down any intelligible frontier
policy : that was one of the achievements of Augustus. Both
in Gaul and Britain it was simply a forward movement by a
general of bold and untiring resolution, backed by an invincible
army. The two trips to Britain, like those across the Rhine,
were reconnaissances only, and the conquest of the island was
one of the legacies which Caesar intended to reserve for the
future. His successor very wisely declined it. There was
little immediate profit there, and the Gallic conquests had
glutted the Roman market with slaves.
Gaul had submitted easily to a force of less than forty
thousand Romans; then it had revolted unsuccessfully. In
the end the whole country acknowledged defeat and rapidly
began to assimilate Latin civilisation. Meanwhile in the
117
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
imperial city the Republic was slowly expiring by a natural
death. Every winter Caesar returned to the Cisalpine part of
his province to receive intelligence from Rome and secure his
position there. Clodius, the most evil of mob-leaders, was his
agent with the democracy. Clodius had managed to hound
the respectable Cicero into exile for his share in suppressing
Catiline, and when Cicero, who was really popular at Rome,
had at length persuaded Pompeius to allow his return, the great
orator remained thenceforward a timid and reluctant servant
of the triumvirate, defending their friends or prosecuting their
enemies, with inward reluctance, no doubt, but with unimpaired
eloquence. With his astonishing victories in Gaul the star of
Julius was rising in the political heavens. The commons of
Rome were not only dazzled by his successes, but captivated
by his largesses. Meanwhile Pompeius was living on his
military reputation, and slowly squandering it by his political
incapacity. He continued to hold various high offices unknown
to the constitution ; he became sole consul, a thing abhorrent
to the Roman system; he held the province of Spain and
governed it from Italy through his legates, and at the same
time continued to exercise a general oversight over the corn-
supply of Rome. In fact there was scarcely anything in the
future position of a Roman emperor which had not its pre-
cedent in the career of Pompeius. Had he wished it, or, more
probably, had he known how to obtain it, he and not Augustus
might easily have been the first Roman emperor. By taste and
natural sympathies he was an aristocrat, but the force of cir-
cumstances had driven him into an uncomfortable position of
alliance with Caesar the democrat and Crassus the plutocrat.
This was in a large measure the secret of his political helpless-
ness. He, the conqueror of the East, often found himself
openly flouted, nay, actually hustled and threatened in the
streets, by the organised roughs. Meanwhile there was a
small but tenacious opposition party of aristocrats, who had no
discipline and therefore no leaders, but among whom Cato and
Marcellus were the most conspicuous. They had not the
118
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
strength to offer any consistent resistance to Caesar's progress,
which they watched with growing jealousy and alarm. They
had not the sense to rally the respectable elements in the state
to their side. Both Cicero and Pompeius would readily have
joined them if they had made it possible. Instead of that, they
were content to carp at Caesar's achievements and threaten him
with a prosecution as soon as he should return to private life.
That was the stupidest mistake, for it made Caesar resolve at
all costs to retain his command, and eventually precipitated the
civil war.
As it can easily be seen, the coalition between Caesar and
Pompeius was not a natural one: psychologically they had
nothing in common, and their interests soon began to diverge.
Pompeius could hardly fail to perceive that Caesar was climbing
by his help and at his expense. The old general saw the
memory of his great deeds eclipsed by the ''.ew one, and there
was no lack of mischief-makers to widen the breach. The
alliance had been cemented in a striking fashion at a con-
ference at Lucca in 56 B.C. when the conservatives were
threatening to annul Caesar's acts in Gaul. Caesar had replied
by inviting Pompeius to meet him in his southern province ;
he also invited those senators who were his friends to appear
at the same time. Two hundred senators had answered the
invitation, and for the time being the opposition died away
into grumbling.
But now the breach was growing open to all men's eyes.
Caesar's charming daughter, Julia, who had been married to
Pompeius as a pledge of union, and had done much to hold
the two chiefs together, died at an early age in the year 54.
In the next year Crassus, the mediating third party of the
"triumvirate," met his fate at Carrhse. In the next there
were more than ordinary disorders over the elections, cul-
minating in a fierce battle in the forum between the rival gangs
of Clodius for the triumvirate and Milo for the senate. The
senate-house was burnt and Clodius slain. Pompeius then
became sole consul, and proceeded, under threat of his army,
119
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
to introduce a series of laws almost openly aimed at Caesar.
By the Pompeian law of magistrates Caesar would be compelled
to appear in Rome as a private citizen for some months in the
year 49, at the mercy of his enemies, while Pompeius himself,
by having his titular command in Spain prolonged, would still
be master of an army. These laws were passed at the crisis of
Caesar's fate in Gaul, when the whole nation had risen in arms
against him. But Caesar emerged victorious, and was now, in
the year 50, free to consider his position in regard to Pompeius
and the senate. Caesar himself maintains that he was reluctant
to resort to violence, and I think we may believe him. Though
nine legions were still under his command, he could hardly
venture to denude the newly conquered province of its gar-
risons, while Pompeius was master of an equal number of
legions, including the veteran Spanish troops, and could levy
any number of recruits or reservists in Italy. Caesar could not
have faced the prospect of a civil war with any confidence as to
the result, even if he had been the sort of man to provoke it
without scruple. There is a further proof : as late as 50 B.C.
he resigned two legions to Pompeius, which would have been
madness if he had then intended to wade through bloodshed
to a throne. In all the abortive negotiations which preceded
the outbreak of the great civil war, Caesar was prepared to
resign everything except the one condition upon which his very
life depended, namely, that he should not have to return to
Rome as a defenceless private citizen. The civil war was due
to the mad folly of the conservatives led by Marcellus, who had
convinced themselves that Caesar meant to sack Rome with his
Gallic cavalry and to reign as tyrant over its ashes. In the end
they succeeded in communicating their panic to Pompeius.
Conciliatory to the last, Caesar was driven to show that
he was in earnest. Bidden to dismiss his army, and declared
a public enemy, in January 49 B.C. he took the decisive step of
crossing the little river Rubicon which marked the frontier of
Italy. Even then it was only a demonstration of force. Only
1500 men followed Caesar to Rimini and Arezzo, and he still
1 20
X
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
offered peace on the most moderate terms. But the panic-
stricken and conscience-stricken senators, still believing in
the imminent sack of Rome, decided to leave their wives and
children there while they saved their precious necks, in head-
long flight to Capua, and then to Brindisi, and then to Greece.
The great Pompeius showed equal panic. Apparently de-
moralised by Caesar's swift and decisive movements, he decided
to give up Italy without a struggle and retire to the East, where
all his triumphs had been won. From there he would fight for
the lordship of the world.
But meanwhile Caesar, by his clemency no less than by his
bold resolution, was winning all Italy to his side. Only one
member of his army — his old lieutenant-general Labienus —
deserted him, while fresh recruits even from the senatorial
party daily joined him. Cool and methodical as ever, he left
Rome to recover from its panic, and the East to wait until he
had secured his hold upon the West. He knew the value of
a veteran army, and therefore turned his march first to Spain.
It took him but a short time to secure the capitulation of
Pompeius's lieutenants in that province, and then at last he
returned to Rome. He was only in the city for eleven days,
but in that time he was able to remove the panic and disorder
there. He restored credit, assured the supply of corn, and got
a grant of citizen rights for his faithful provincials of Cisalpine
Gaul.
Meanwhile the Pompeian army was gathering in northern
Greece, and the senators were breathing death and damnation
against Caesar. The final struggle on the Albanian coast and
in Thessaly, which culminated in the great battle of Pharsalus
(48 B.C.), decided the fate of the world. The troops were fairly
equal, if numbers and training are taken into account ; in
numbers alone Csesar was far inferior. But Caesar's men had
extraordinary devotion to their general, as he had to his beloved
legions. Never was there completer confidence between an
army and its leader than between Caesar and his veterans. He
could be merciless in discipline. Once he had to decimate the
121
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Ninth Legion, but he could move his grim legionaries to tears
by a reproach. He shared all their labours, he starved with
them, and marched those prodigious forced marches by their side.
They trusted in his generalship, and they were not disappointed.
Pompeius showed, when at last he roused himself, that he too
had not forgotten the military art. It was a battle of giants ;
Pompeius the more orthodox tactician, Caesar incredibly bold,
rapid, and far-seeing. More than once it was touch and go.
Caesar had terrible difficulties to face, above all in the necessity
of transporting his army across the wintry Adriatic in face of
the enemy when he had no fleet. The feat was accomplished
by sheer audacity, and then he had to face and contain a larger
army, thoroughly well prepared and supplied, with no base and
no communications for his own men. He actually tried to fling
a line of earthworks round the Pompeian army while his own
men were starving. Yet it was by generalship that the battle
of Pharsalus was won.
Pompeius fled to Egypt for refuge, and was murdered there
by treacherous Alexandrians and renegade Romans. Caesar,
who had received the submission of the whole provincial world
with the exception of King Juba's African realm, followed
Pompeius to Egypt, and on landing was presented with his
rival's head. In Alexandria itself Caesar had to face one of the
most serious crises of his life. For six months he held the
royal palace against a host of infuriated Orientals. In the palace
was Cleopatra, the wife and sister of the reigning Ptolemy, and
then a brilliant and fascinating young woman of twenty. Let
us believe that she was beautiful, and that the portrait-painters
and coin-engravers of her day were incompetent or disloyal.*
But if rumour spoke truly, Caesar was by no means exclusive in
his devotion to female charms. Her son was named Caesarion.
When at length Julius Caesar escaped from the twofold
entanglements of love and battle at Alexandria, he had more
fighting still before he could make the earth his footstool. He
spent a few days in Syria to arrange the affairs of the East, and
* Plate 22, No. 2.
122
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
among other things gave orders to build up the wall of Jerusalem,
which had been thrown down by the orders of Pompeius. Then
he passed over to Asia Minor, and at Zela crushed the rebellion
of a Pontic successor of Mithradates. So back to Italy for a
few weeks, and there he found all in disorder, and his legions,
including the faithful Tenth, mutinying for their pay. He settled
the disorder at Rome by his mere presence, enacted laws to relieve
the economic distress there, and, having no money to pay his
soldiers, quelled their mutiny by sheer sleight of speech. Mean-
while the broken Pompeians had gathered in thousands at the
court of King Juba, who himself had a formidable host. As
soon as he could find time, the restless conqueror crossed straight
to Africa with as many soldiers as he could muster, leaving
the main force to follow. That was always Caesar's way — to
dart straight upon the scene of danger was his first instinct.
At his coming the marrow oozed out of the very bones of his
foe. He had a Scipio and a Cato, and a host of notable Romans
arrayed against him. At Thapsus, in April of the year 46, he
smote them, and slew (it is said) fifty thousand men — fourteen
legions of Romans. There at Utica, Cato died his famous Stoic
death, far the noblest scene of his mistaken life, and so became
a theme for the glorification of Stoic Republicanism for all
time. Afranius, Scipio, King Juba, Faustus Sulla, and many
others, died also. A few stragglers found their way to Spain,
to continue the fight there under the two sons of Pompeius.
Thither in the next year, so soon as he had leisure, Caesar fol-
lowed them, and in a last great battle at Munda he finished the
resistance. Only Sextus Pompeius was left of the Pompeian
party, and he escaped for a time to begin an interesting career
as a gentleman-pirate.
In this manner the amazing Caesar conquered the world.
Now it was unquestionably his. What was he to make of it ?
This story has been told in vain unless it has shown that the
city of Rome was rotten to the core, with no sound elements
left in it. Caesar himself was a solitary prodigy; he had no
supporters worthy of his confidence. Labienus had deserted
123
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
him, Quintus Cicero, another of his legates in Gaul, had also
fought against him. Mark Antony was perhaps his right-hand
man, but Antony was nothing but a brilliant orator and a fair
soldier; of character or reputation he had not a shred. Brutus,
to whom Caesar was personally devoted, had fought against
him, and was — in spite of Shakespeare and republican tradition
— a vain and shallow egoist. Caesar had no brother and no
legitimate son. Across in Apollonia his little great-nephew
Octavius was still at school. Julius Csesar had to reorganise
a broken world alone. For a hundred years there had been
no peace in Rome, and no proper government in the empire.
Every year of its lingering agony, the Republic had drawn closer
to the inevitable issue in Monarchy. Even Cicero, when he
tried to console himself for the horrible disorders of Roman
life by depicting an ideal commonwealth, had been compelled
to build it round ^princeps who should maintain order, and thus
allow liberty to exist. In practice also the last century had
seen a succession of "princes" — Gracchus, Marius, Cinna, Sulla,
Pompeius — all from the necessity of the case forced into un-
constitutional positions. And now Csesar had succeeded with-
out a rival. Sulla had resigned power, and his work had
almost immediately fallen to pieces. There was now, even more
than then, no chance of building up a senatorial party, and in-
deed Csesar had been the lifelong victim of senatorial arrogance
and folly. It was equally impossible to build up a Roman
democracy out of the demoralised loungers in the forum.
Obviously monarchy was the only solution. Csesar was
fifty-five years old, spent with war and labour, and, as I have
said, quite alone. He was a man without beliefs or illusions
or scruples. Not a bad man : for he preferred justice and
mercy to tyranny and cruelty, and he had a passion for logic
and order. He was not the sort of man to make compromises.
His sudden successes had taught him to despise his enemies.
He was not, of course, ignorant that the Romans (if there were
any true Romans left) had it in their blood to hate the title of
Rex. Every Roman schoolboy was brought up to declaim in
124
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
praise of regicides. But possibly in time they could be
accustomed to the hideous idea. For the present, old-fashioned
titles like Dictator, Consul, and Tribune would suffice. But
the office must be made hereditary, and the boy Octavius was
already marked for adoption and succession. The title of Rex
could wait. Caesar would feel his way gently.
But patience was not one of his virtues. Actually fortune
only left him less than two years, and those broken by tedious
campaigns in the Spanish provinces, for the regeneration of
Roman society. In that time he restored the finances,
rearranged the provincial system, abolished the political clubs
which had been centres of disorder at Rome, reformed the
Calendar, dedicated a new forum and new temples, restored and
revised the senate, founded a system of municipal government
for Italy, settled his veterans on the land, and was preparing a
great expedition to chastise the Parthians.
Most of these acts were wisely done, but in one thing
Caesar miscalculated. His brilliant successes and the adulation
with which he was surrounded led him to despise his enemies.
He would not stoop to natter antiquarian prejudices or to cast
a decent veil over his monarchical position. You may treat
people as slaves and they will admire you for it, but when you
call them slaves they will begin to resent it. Caesar failed to
rise from his chair to receive the senators. In his reformed
senate he included representatives of the equestrian class, pro-
vincials and even distinguished soldiers of quite humble birth.
He allowed his statue to be set up beside the Seven Kings
of Rome. He accepted a gilt chair, he permanently retained
the triumphant general's laurel-crown, partly because he was
bald and keenly sensitive about it ; and then either through
his orders or by their own orficiousness his friends began to
throw up ballons tfessai in the direction of kingship. At the
Lupercalia Antony offered him a crown of gold. It was spread
abroad that an ancient Sibylline prophecy had foretold that the
Parthians could only be conquered by a king and that Caesar
was to adopt the title for the purpose of his Eastern expedition.
I25
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
It was trifles like these, and trivial jealousies, trivial requests
declined in the name of justice, that led to the great con-
spiracy. No doubt the influence of rhetorical patriotism
had its effect upon many of the conspirators. An unknown
hand wrote " O that thou wert living ! " upon the statue of
old Brutus the Liberator. But neither Brutus nor Cassius
deserves our admiration. It was pique not patriotism that
sharpened their daggers. Sixty senators conspired together,
and on the eve of setting out for Parthia — the Ides of March,
44 B.C. — Julius Caesar was slain.
And then, having slain the tyrant and liberated the republic,
the patriots were helpless. A doctrinaire like Cicero might
still dream of restoring the commonwealth ; but the only real
question was who should succeed. The people only cried for
peace. It was not so much the speech of Mark Antony as the
funeral of Caesar, cleverly stage-managed by Calpurnia, and
the genuine sorrow of his veterans, which gradually turned the
popular feeling against the conspirators. The senate did not
venture to declare Caesar a tyrant, they confirmed his acts, but
there was no proposal to punish the murderers. The whole
conclusion was a feeble compromise.
The man who should have grasped the helm was Mark
Antony. He was left sole consul, there was a legion and
the praetorian cohort under arms only waiting the word.
The conspirators had only a few gladiators in their pay.
Antony had every right to arrest them. But Antony was not
the man for the part. With all his talents his character was
feeble. He was always dependent on his surroundings and
generally under feminine influence. Once it had been the
dancer Cytheris, at present it was the aggressive Fulvia ;
for a time Octavia almost reformed him, but Cleopatra easily
ensnared him. He was a rake and a spendthrift, always in
debt. He was timid of public opinion : just now the aristo-
cratic society in which he moved was prating of tyrannicide.
Antony wanted to be in the fashion. There were dramatic
embracements between Antony and Brutus.
126
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
Now the testament of Caesar, which had just been confirmed
by the senate, named young Gneius Octavius as heir to three-
quarters of his estate. At the end of the will was a codicil
adopting him. Henceforth until he gets the title of Augustus
this young Caesar must be called Octavianus, though he never
accepted that name for himself. The " second heirs " named
in case the first should fail or decline to succeed included
D. Brutus, one of the murderers, and Mark Antony himself.
Whosoever should accept the heirship would be bound by all
Roman ideas of honour to undertake the chastisement of the
murderers. Antony seems to have assumed that the obscure
young man would not be likely to accept the inheritance. He
therefore got together all Caesar's papers, and began to spend
Caesar's immense fortune as only Antony could. He began
also to manipulate Caesar's papers, inserting anything he liked
among Caesar's "acts," selling honours, raising taxes, recalling
exiles to please Fulvia. For some time no one ventured to
complain. Leading senators like Cicero retired to the country
remarking that the tyrant was dead but the tyranny still alive.
Then, of course, Antony had to provide himself with a province
to ensure his future safety. Moreover, the cry of the veterans
for revenge began to move him to play the Caesarian. Thus
Antony was virtually master of the Roman world and the sky
was dark with menace.
Into this dangerous arena steps the nineteen-year-old
Octavian. His guardian advised him to have nothing to do
with his perilous inheritance. Historians have often dubbed
him a coward. But alone and unfriended this youth left his
tutors at Apollonia and came to Rome to take up his trust. It
meant, first, revenge upon the conspirators; and secondly, a
quarrel with Antony. It meant, in fact, two more civil wars,
and Octavian had seen nothing of warfare. He set to work
coolly and warily. There was still a magic in the name of
Caesar, and the veterans rallied to him and besought him to
march against Brutus and Cassius. Part of his duties as
executor was to pay a million sterling in donations to the
127
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Roman people. He sold his property and began to distribute
the largess, man by man, tribe by tribe, until the sum was paid.
He gave magnificent games in his " father's " honour, with the
lucky star of Julius publicly exhibited. He bought an army
of 10,000 men with borrowed money. Two of Antony's
legions deserted to him bodily, and the very veterans of
Antony's bodyguard offered to murder their general if young
Caesar would give the signal.
But there was no haste in his method. Antony was to be
used first and then destroyed. Octavian tried for a time to
work with the senate, and even marched against Antony under
their orders, but the incredible folly of the senate, who were
persuaded by Cicero that "the boy" was negligible, drove him
into the famous triple alliance of Antony, Octavian, and
Lepidus. These three were appointed under threat of their
armies to a kind of dictatorship in commission, " a triumvirate
to reorganise the state." Revenge was the explicit motive of
this league. They began with the usual horrid proscription of
all the senatorial aristocrats to be found in Rome. This was
mainly Antony's work. His creditors, his enemies and his
wife's enemies were slain wholesale, and, among them, Cicero.
Eighteen towns of Italy were destroyed to provide lands for the
veterans.
Meanwhile the tyrannicides had gathered in the East, and
now Antony and the young Caesar set out in pursuit of them.
In the two battles of Philippi the luck of Octavian and the skill
of Antony triumphed over their dispirited adversaries. Brutus
and Cassius fell. A few of the " patriots " survived and
joined Sextus Pompeius who was still at large in the Medi-
terranean. In the warfare at Philippi Octavian's inexperience
and real want of talent for generalship had been very apparent
in contrast to Antony. Lepidus was already a nonentity.
Antony went off to the East ; and while he was holding his
court of justice in Cilicia there sailed into harbour the splendid
royal yacht of Cleopatra. The people left the judgment seat
to see the famous Queen, and Antony too was soon at her feet.
128
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
Signer Ferrero would have us believe, relying partly on the
mature age of Cleopatra, that it was policy, not love, which
made Antony dally at Alexandria. Policy no doubt was there,
but everything that we know of Antony leads us to believe
that he was just the man to be captured by a celebrated
courtesan, particularly if she were also a queen. Certainly his
sojourn in the East lowered his character both as a politician
and as a soldier.
Octavian had to face Rome and the West. His task was
full of perils but also full of possibilities. The soldiers were
mutinous, he himself was grievously sick, and the redoubtable
Fulvia, who was her husband's real agent at Rome, very soon
perceived that he was an enemy to be fought. Octavian had to
fight another small civil war at Perugia before he could call him-
self master even of Italy, and then fight Sextus Pompeius in the
Sicilian waters. Luckily he had at his side a splendid soldier —
general and admiral by turns as were all good Roman fighting-
men — Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa.* He had also as his agent
at Rome Maecenas, an astute diplomatist and man of business.
So though he himself often displayed feebleness and was often
in danger he accomplished his task and became master of the
West. Thus the lordship of the world was reduced to a
plain duel.
Antony had actually married Cleopatra after Fulvia's
death and Octavia's divorce, and as consort of the Egyptian
queen reigned in Oriental majesty. He had marched against
the Parthians and failed ignominiously. He was assigning
provinces and princedoms to Cleopatra and her dubious
offspring. It was easy for Octavian to represent Antony as
a renegade Roman threatening to introduce Oriental monarchy
into Rome. When at last it came to the final civil war
Octavian appeared as fighting in the public cause of Rome
against Egypt, with Antony as a mere deserter on the Egyptian
side. The great naval battle of Actium (31 B.C.), which
decided the mastery of the world for Octavian, was thus a
* Plate 27.
I 129
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
triumph for the Roman arms over the barbarians. Actually it
was a degenerate Antony who sailed away at the crisis of the
battle in the wake of the queen's yacht. The glory of the
day was Agrippa's. The luck as usual was the young Caesar's.
He was able to inaugurate his reign at Rome by presenting
her with Egypt, the richest country in the world. In 29 B.C.
he came home to celebrate a glorious triple triumph and to
open a new era as the first Roman Emperor.
LATE REPUBLICAN CIVILISATION
Such is a brief sketch of the hundred and four years from
the day when Tiberius Gracchus first arose to challenge the
senatorial oligarchy to the day when the Empire was estab-
lished upon the ruins of the Republic. It is perhaps the most
terrible century in the history of the world. Rome had become
the centre of the world, the only hope for civilisation, and
Rome was filled with bloodshed and corruption. For the
provinces there was no decent government, only a succession
of licensed plunderers. In the city itself there was a long
series of personal struggles for the mastery; politics meant
organised rioting by gangs of roughs, questions were solved
by the dagger or by the swords of senators. At intervals
there came from each side alternately the murderous proscrip-
tions, in which every man of spirit or eminence on the
opposing side was marked down for destruction. Often their
sons and grandsons perished with them, and in any case their
fortunes were destroyed. Besides the proscriptions there had
been of late a series of civil wars on a great scale in which
thousands of the bravest Romans perished by each other's
swords. A successful foreign war may have some compensating
effect in stiffening the moral fibre of a nation and exalting its
spirit. But civil war is disastrous in every way. It is only
the meanest who survive and the evil passions which it
arouses have no compensation.
In such a period it is wonderful that civilisation should
have been able to make any advances at all. But in spite of
130
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
the public turmoil private citizens were amassing enormous
fortunes out of the plunder of the world, and living, though
always on the edge of a volcano, in state and luxury like
kings. It is now our task to see something of private life and
culture in the Rome of the expiring Republic.
Money was easily made in those days and lavishly spent.
Even an honest man like Cicero, governing a comparatively
poor province like Cilicia, made at least .£20,000 by
his year of office while he remitted to the provincials a
million, which, as he says, any governor of average morality
would have retained. Legacies were a very frequent source
of revenue especially to pleaders, and it was customary for a
rich testator at Rome to make large bequests to his friends.
Cicero gained .£200,000 by such legacies. Foreign kings
and states paid handsomely for legal advice or support.
Although a barrister was supposed to give his services for
nothing yet gifts and legacies were not refused. For the
financier or business man there were many channels to affluence.
There were mines all over the empire to be financed and
exploited. Although there was little genuine industry at Rome,
yet the training and use of slaves for various undertakings was
a lucrative business. Crassus trained a salvage brigade for
Rome and went about to fires with them in order to make bids
for the purchase of the burning property. Atticus trained a
company of copying clerks and made money by the sale of
books. He also kept gladiators and hired them out to
magistrates for the games. Fortunes were made, as in the
case of Crassus, by buying up the confiscated property of the
proscribed. Land speculation was rendered extremely profitable
by the frequent assignation of farm-lands to veteran soldiers
who were generally glad to sell them at once. The extravagance
of the Roman nobles led to a very brisk traffic in loans at high
interest. There was a great deal of genuine commercial
speculation in ships and cargoes, generally by companies, and
Cato advises the investor to put his money in fifty different
enterprises rather than in one at a time. Commerce over-seas
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
was, however, forbidden to the senators by the Claudian law,
and these speculated chiefly in land, on which they made a
profit by slave-labour. But the most profitable business of all
was tax-farming, in which the equestrian classes joined together
in capitalist rings. In these and other ways prodigious
fortunes were accumulated. The stored-up capital of the
Roman world is astounding in its magnitude compared even
to that of modern times. The real property of Pompeius sold
f°r .£700,000. ^Esopus, the popular actor, left .£200,000.
After the most lavish donations to the public Crassus left
nearly two millions sterling by will. On the death of Caesar
the treasury contained eight millions in bullion of which a
million was the dictator's own property.
But all the wealth of the Roman empire was shared by a
very narrow circle. The gulf between rich and poor was far
deeper than it is to-day. We hear of poor nobles and rich
upstarts, but of a respectable middle class with traditions of its
own there is little trace. There is an aristocracy of a few
thousand families, and nothing else but a vast proletariat, silent
and hungry, dependent on their bounty, bribed with money,
bribed with free corn, and bribed with bloody spectacles. They
lived miserably in huge tenement blocks or in hovels on the
outskirts of the city. The only career open to them was in the
army, and that was chiefly filled by the stronger rustics. They
had nothing to do but lounge in the streets, gape at gladiators
and actors and shout for the most generous politicians of the
day. No doubt there were honest citizen cobblers, but Roman
history is silent about them.
That section of the city which is to be styled Society was as
proud and reckless as the French aristocracy before the Revolu-
tion. The senate had now become almost literally a hereditary
rank. A child born into one of these princely houses was
tended by a multitude of slaves. By this time there was some
attempt at a liberal education. Attended by a slave pedagogue
the boy would go daily to the school of some starved Greek,
who would teach him his letters and his figures. The staple
132
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
of education was the delivery of artificial declamation on the
model of Isocrates or Demosthenes. After this stage a young
man would commonly be sent abroad to Athens or Rhodes to
finish his education with a little philosophy or mathematics,
but chiefly with oratory. Returned to Rome, his destiny placed
him in a circle of foppish youths, who devoted their principal
attention to dress and manicure. Bejewelled and scented, they
practised every vice, natural and unnatural. In due course,
with no effort but a few bribes from the parental purse, they
became priests and augurs, thus entering what were in reality
aristocratic dining-clubs. Dining was now the principal art of
Rome. Macrobius has preserved the menu of one of these
priestly dinners of the Republic, at which the priests and vestals
were present. The party began with a prolusion like the
Russian or Swedish system of hors d'ceuvres, in which seven-
teen dishes of fish and game were presented. The dinner
itself contained ten more courses, " sow's udder, boar's head,
fish-pasties, boar-pasties, ducks, boiled teals, hares, roasted
fowls, starch-pastry, Pontic-pastry." Such was the State religion
of Rome in the first century before Christ. At intervals the young
noble's father's friends would invite him to join their staff on
foreign service. If he had the good fortune to serve with
Pompeius or Lucullus in the East or with Caesar in Gaul, he
might get a taste of real manliness, and serve his country as
tribune of the soldiers. But more often in a peaceful province
like Sicily or Africa he was merely initiated into the arts of ex-
tortion, and enjoyed all the vicious opportunities of the younger
sons of princes. Thus fortified by experience he would return to
Rome to seek the suffrages of his fellow-citizens for the quaestor-
ship, the first rung on the ladder of office. Votes were to be won
by bribery, direct or indirect. One candidate would spread a
banquet for a whole tribe ; another would seek to outshine his
rivals by providing strange beasts from Africa — among Cicero's
correspondence there is an urgent appeal for Cilician panthers
to be slain in the arena — or by dressing his gladiators in
silver arniour. Similar requirements accompanied his progress
133
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
through all the stages of office on a progressively lavish scale.
As quaestor he would be a judge or a comptroller of the treasury
for a single year. Then as sedile he would conduct the public
festivals, preside in the aedile's court, control the markets and
streets of Rome. So he rose to be consul, commander of
legions and president of the state, and then in due course
governor of an enormous province. From his quaestorship
onwards his seat in the senate was assured.
In his home the noble Roman lived like a king, waited upon
by an enormous retinue. There was much luxury and little
comfort. The houses of the Romans were on a far more luxu-
rious scale than those of the Greeks. The only genuine Roman
taste that can be called liberal was the hobby of collecting
beautiful town houses and country seats. Cicero, who was a
man of modest income and tastes, seems to have possessed
about eighteen different estates, and gave nearly .£30,000 for
his town house. The qualities prized in the choice of a
mansion were space and coolness, and the Romans of this age
were by no means insensible to the charms of scenery. The
coast round Naples and Baiae was dotted with sumptuous
villas, and the gay world spent its summer there in much the
same way as the cosmopolitan crowds at Biarritz. Besides his
great town house and his family mansion at Arpinum, and his
country houses at Tusculum and elsewhere, Cicero had marine
villas all along the coast at Antium, Formiae, Cumse, Puteoli,
and Pompeii, and all along the Campanian road were his private
" inns," where he lodged on his journeys. His favourite villa
was the one at Tusculum, the scene of many of his literary
labours, and among others of the famous Tusculan Disputa-
tions. It had previously belonged to Sulla, and was adorned
with paintings in commemoration of Sulla's victories. It was
situated on the top of a hill along with many other villas of the
aristocracy, and commanded a delightful view of the city about
twelve miles away. The park attached to it was extensive, and
through it there ran a broad canal. He had books everywhere,
but his principal library was deposited at Antium. At Puteoli
134
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
he constructed a cloister and a grove on the model of Plato's
Academy.
The principal feature of the Roman house was its large
colonnaded hall, with a roof open in the middle to admit light
and air. This roof sloped inwards, and allowed the rain to fall
into a central tank, delightful for coolness, no doubt, but prob-
ably very unwholesome.' In old days the atrium had been the
common room of the Roman family. It still retained a sym-
bolical marriage-bed, a symbolical spinning-wheel, the portraits
of the ancestors, and the ceremonial altar to the family gods,
who were now stored away in a cupboard close at hand. Most
of the rooms opened directly out of the atrium. As they are
seen in the ruins of Roman villas, they appear to have been
comparatively small and ill-lighted. The larger houses them-
selves were generally built of local limestone with facings of
stucco, though the greater part of Rome was still in this first
century B.C. constructed of sun-baked bricks. It was con-
sidered unheard-of luxury when Mamurra faced his walls with
marble slabs. The floors were generally tessellated. It was an
innovation of the Roman architect to build houses of three or
more stories, but it was probably only a starveling poet who
would live on the fourth floor. A noble's house would spread
over the ground regardless of space, but the bedrooms and
sometimes the dining-room were upstairs. Externally the
Roman house was a little finer than the Greek, being fronted
with a pillared forecourt and a dwelling for the concierge. At
the back the atrium opened into a colonnaded garden with a
fountain, flower-beds, and shrubbery.
As the Roman's house was built mainly with a view to
coolness, so his daily life was that of a southerner. Rome was
never a healthy city in the summer, and all who could afford it
fled to the country or the sea-side. Almost every Roman
known to us in literature was either an invalid or a valetudina-
rian. Malarial fever in its periodic form was very widely
spread, and most of our distinguished friends pursued a
medical regimen. Ceesar was subject to fits of epilepsy, Cicero
'35
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
was of weak constitution, Horace was a martyr to ophthalmia
as well as malaria, Augustus was always ailing and often at
death's door. The Roman's most amiable idiosyncrasy was his
devotion to the bath. Every considerable house had an elabo-
rate bathing department with at least a hot room built over a
furnace, and a cold room with a swimming-tank. But there were
also public baths, on an ever-increasing scale of magnificence.
Agrippa alone built 170 of them at Rome. Rich and poor alike
made it their daily practice to bathe after exercise, just before their
principal meal in the early afternoon. The custom of the noon-
tide siesta was universal, except with prodigies of industry like
Cicero. A great deal of time was spent in lounging abroad
through the streets or under shady colonnades. The streets of
Rome, as of all ancient cities, were extremely narrow, but in
the busy parts of the city all wheeled traffic was forbidden.
The wealthy Romans have a name for abominable luxury
and gluttony. As to the general question of its influence in
destroying the morality of Rome I have already ventured to
express disbelief in the popular view. From all that we read,
it does not appear that the ordinary Roman was naturally
addicted to intemperance either in eating or drinking. The
praise of wine is with Horace a literary pose; personally he
had a poor head and a poor stomach. The Italian is not, and
probably never was a great natural eater or drinker judged by
northern standards. But rhetoricians and satirists have de-
lighted to dwell upon the immensity of Roman dinner-parties
which often lasted all day and included a hideous series of
curious and exotic dainties. This was the form which, in
default of any nobler ideals, wealth at Rome had chosen for its
display. Time hung heavily on this slave-tended aristocracy :
to dine from dawn to daylight was one of the ways of killing
it. So the guests reclined on their couches, dancers jigged
before them, musicians played, occasionally a tumbler or a
tight-rope walker would appear, in literary households a slave
would read philosophy ; and all the time the soft-footed slaves
were coming and going with dishes of strange morsels gathered
136
PLATE XIX. JULIUS C/ESAR
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
from the ends of the earth, and rare wines from the four corners
of the globe. A dish of nightingales' tongues is not the sort
of thing to please one who is a gourmet by conviction or
natural taste. Eating was for most of these poor starved
imaginations the only form of culture they understood. It was,
however, conducted with tremendous ceremony. There was a
" tricliniarch " to marshal his " decuries " of slaves as each
dish came into the room. There was a special " structor " to
arrange the dishes, a special " analecta " to pick up the frag-
ments that the diners dropped. Carving was a science with
various branches, as in old England, and the skilful carver
had his scheme of gesticulations for each kind of dish. There
was another slave specially appointed to cry out the name
and quality of each plat. In addition to these every guest had
his own footman standing behind his couch. The most charac-
teristic and the most unpleasant feature of a Roman banquet
was the manner in which the diners assisted nature to provide
them with an appetite. Even Julius Caesar "took his vomit"
both before and after his dinner-party with Cicero.
The public shows, which formed the chief recreation
of rich and poor alike, grew yearly more brutal and bloody.
As they were the means by which ambitious candidates for
office sought to canvass popularity, the principal aim was to
present something novel and startling. No doubt the more
refined spectators regarded the butchery of wild beasts or paid
gladiators with disgust, but the populace at large only shouted
for more blood. Five hundred lions were slaughtered on one
day at the triumphal games given by Pompeius. Cicero writes
that the wholesale destruction of elephants in the arena actually
moved the people to pity. There were still some real theatrical
performances in Rome. Actors and mimics, indeed, if they were
handsome and graceful, made large fortunes. Most Roman
nobles of a literary bent amused themselves with writing
tragedies. Cicero's soldier brother composed four on a fort-
night's journey to Gaul. But these were only employed to bore
one's friends at dinner. Original literary dramas were even
'37
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
less often staged at Rome than they are in London. Plautus
and Terence for comedy, and Pacuvius, Attius, and Ennius for
tragedy, had already become classics and were still regularly
performed. The drama died stillborn at Rome.
Historians of Rome, fortified by Juvenal and Petronius, love
to depict the vices of the emperors and the imperial period.
The later Republic can show us a morality no more exalted.
The fragments of Varro's satires written in the heyday of the
Republic are in precisely the same strain of despondency as
are the satires of Juvenal. For him, too, virtue is a thing of
the past. Sober fact compels us to see that the aristocratic
society of Republican Rome was hideously immoral. Volun-
tary celibacy and " race-suicide " were already rife. The family
was a decaying institution, divorce was common, and the
sterility of wickedness had long been at work to sap the ranks
of the nobility. Even Cicero divorced his wife Terentia upon
a trivial pretext after a long period of happy conjugal life in
order to marry an heiress. Csesar had four wives of his own, not
to mention Cleopatra, without begetting a single legitimate son.
Cato, the strict censor of morals, having been jilted in his youth,
married a wife, divorced her for adultery after she had borne
him two sons, married another, lent her for six years to the
orator Hortensius, and on his death resumed her again. Mark
Antony married Fadia, then Antonia, then divorced her and
lived publicly with Cytheris the actress, then married
Fulvia, who had already been twice a widow, then married
Octavia, then Cleopatra. These marriages were made and
dissolved freely for political reasons. A large part of Roman
politics was carried on in the salons of the Roman ladies, and if
half of what Cicero alleges be true Messalina herself had her
republican prototypes in women like Clodia and Fulvia. Beside
almost promiscuous relations between the sexes, the darker
forms of Oriental vice were extremely fashionable among the
gilded youth of Rome.
Religion was almost purely formal or political. Augur-
ships and priesthoods still existed as the perquisite of aristo-
138
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
cratic families. People still uttered the formulae of oaths and
vows. There was still some belief in omens and prodigies,
the altars still smoked with sacrifice when triumphant generals
went up to the capitol, but few prayers ascended to Jupiter in
sincerity. Instead the importation of strange deities continued.
Again and again in this first century before Christ the senate
tried to expel the worship of Isis from the precincts of Rome,
but it always returned, and eventually the triumvirs built a
temple to Isis and Serapis as a measure to court popular favour.
The Magna Mater of the Phrygian corybants had long been
firmly established at Rome.
I think it was general materialism and immorality which
killed the old State religion at Rome. Greek philosophy had
generally been able to exist amicably by the side of religion.
It now came in to fill up the gap left by the absence of real
religious feeling. But at Rome, though Stoicism afterwards
became a powerful force of inspiration to the noblest minds,
philosophy was in the main a form, of literary activity for
dilettantists. Cato of Utica was a Stoic by temperament
before he became one by doctrine. Cicero amused his leisure
by recasting and combining the doctrines of the leading Greek
schools in a Roman form of dialogue, in imitation of Plato; but
with him it was more of a literary exercise than anything else,
and Cicero has added little or nothing to the world's stock of
philosophical ideas. Only in the poet Lucretius does the fire
of philosophy burn with genuine ardour. Lucretius had before
him the task of proselytising at Rome for the doctrines of
Epicurus and Democritus. People accustomed to the modern
associations of the word " epicure " may wonder what there
was to arouse the enthusiasm of a poet in the philosophy of
Epicurus. That creed offered a rational explanation of the
universe. With its theory of spontaneous atomic creation,
and its surprising foreknowledge of some at least of the ideas
of natural selection and evolution, it claimed to satisfy the
intellect of mankind and to drive out all the grovelling super-
stition and empty rites which had usurped at Rome, as they
139
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
tend to do always and everywhere, the throne of religion. All
the enthusiasm with which the nineteenth century approached
the new discoveries of science glowed in the heart of this
rugged poet of the first century before Christ. "Voluptas"
was his only goddess, but it was no vulgar pleasure of the body
upon earth. It was the spirit soaring to freedom and know-
ledge. This atheist Epicurean is, in the true sense of the
word, the most religious of all poets. He explains the nature
of lightning in order that his fellow-creatures may not live in
fear of thunderbolts. He explains with the same confident
logic the nature of death in order that they may not fear the
natural resolution of body and soul into their primordial atoms.
He is moved almost to tears by the folly and sorrow of his
brother-men.'and he pleads with them to suffer the sacred lamp
of philosophy to shine upon their darkened minds :
at nisi purgatum est pectus, quae praelia nobis
atque pericula sunt ingratis insinuandum ?
quantae turn scindunt hominem cupedinis acres
sollicitum curse? quantique perinde timores?
quidue superbia, spurcitia ac petulantia, quantas
efficiunt cladeis ? quid luxus, desidiaeque ?
haec igitur qui cuncta subegerit, ex animoque
expulerit dictis, non armis, nonne decebit
hunc hominem numero diuom dignarier esse ? *
His doctrine is medicine for the feverish unrest of the day :
exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille
esse domi quern perteesum est, subitoque reuentat ;
quippe foris nihilo melius qui sentiat esse.
currit agens mannos ad uillam praecipitanter
auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans :
oscitat extemplo tetigit quom limina uillae
* But unless the breast is cleared, what battles and dangers must then find
their way into us in our own despite ! What poignant cares inspired by lust
then rend the distrustful man, and then also what mighty fears ! and pride,
filthy lust, and wantonness ! what disasters they occasion, and luxury and all
sorts of sloth ! He therefore who shall have subdued all these and banished
them from the mind by words, not arms, shall he not have a just title to be
ranked among the gods? (V. 43-51, Munro's translation,)
140
2
w
z
w
X
X
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
aut abit in somnum grauis, atque obliuia quserit,
aut etiam properans urbem petit atque reuisit.
hoc se quisque modo fugit . . .*
He has a compassionate scorn for the mourner :
aufer abhinc lacrumas, barathre, et compesce querelas . . .
cedit enim rerum nouitate extrusa uetustas
semper et ex aliis aliud reparare necesse est ;
nee quisquam in barathrum, nee Tartara deditur alta.
materies opus est ut crescant postera saecla ;
quae tamen omnia te, uita perfuncta, sequentur :
nee minus ergo ante haec quam tu cecidere cadentque.
sic alid ex alio nunquam desistet oriri ;
uitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu. f
Death has no sting for him :
num quid ibi horribile apparet ? num triste uidetur
quidquam ? non omni somno securius exstat ? J
Lucretius was, of course, set down by Cicero, as was Shake-
speare by Dryden, as being rude and unpolished. His poem
is indeed sheer didactic argument with occasional digres-
sions, and he strings his points together with the bald transi-
tional words and phrases of argumentative prose. But in
* The man who is sick of home often issues forth from his large mansion, and
as suddenly comes back to it, finding as he does that he is no better off abroad.
He races to his country house, driving his jennets in headlong haste, as if
hurrying to bring help to a house on fire ; he yawns the moment he has reached
the door of his house, or sinks heavily into sleep and seeks forgetfulness, or
even in haste goes back again to town. In this way each man flies from
himself. (III. 1060-8, Munro's translation.)
t Away from this time forth with thy tears, rascal ; a truce to thy com-
plainings. . . . For old things give way and are supplanted by new without fail,
and one thing must ever be replenished out of other things; and no one is
delivered over to the pit and black Tartarus. Matter is needed for after
generations to grow, all of which, though, will follow thee when they have finished
their term of life ; and thus it is that all these no less than thou have before this
come to an end and hereafter will come to an end. Thus one thing will never
cease to rise out of another ; and life is granted to none in fee-simple, to all in
usufruct. (III. 955, 964-71, Munro's translation.)
I Is there aught in this that looks appalling, aught that wears an aspect of
gloom? Is it not more untroubled than any sleep? (III. 976-7, Munro's
translation.)
141
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
virility of thought and expression, even in majesty of sound
and force of vivid imagery, he is, when he cares to be, on
a plane quite above and away from the ordinary sphere of
classic Latin poetry. Almost alone among Roman writers he
has a message of his own to deliver. His fellow-countrymen
thought little of him, and failed to preserve any details of his
biography. The monks of the Middle Ages consigned him to
the hell he had flouted, and Jerome provided him, five hundred
years after his death, with an end edifying to piety, but quite
incredible to any one who has read his work with sympathy.
He was said to have died of a love potion, and to have com-
posed his poem in the intervals of delirium. He appears to
have lived between 100 and 50 B.C.
In addition to the tragedies and epics which noblemen threw
off as an elegant pastime for their superfluous leisure hours,
love-poetry, pasquinades, and vers de soctitt travelled merrily
from salon to salon. If Lucretius carries the heaviest metal of
Latin poets, Catullus has by far the lightest touch. He writes
with an ease which makes Horace seem laboured, and with a
simplicity which makes Propertius and even Ovid look like
pedants, though Catullus himself, like all Romans, thought fit
occasionally to adopt the classical pose, and fill his verses with
learned allusions. If it were not for the influence of the school-
room, to which most of Catullus's work is for the best of reasons
unknown, he would be recognised as possessing far more of the
vital spark of poetry than Horace. Roman culture, being mainly
second-hand, is almost entirely lacking in the quality of fresh
youth which we enjoy in such writers as Chaucer and the early
Elizabethan singers. Catullus, therefore, the earliest important
lyric poet of Rome, is by no means unsophisticated. On the
contrary, he is a clever son of the forum — a boulevardier, one
might say — with a pretty but savage wit in reviling democrats
like Csesar and Mamurra. But, with his truly Italian scurrility,
he combines the quintessence of Italian charm. When the in-
spiration takes him he is simple, direct, and natural. Indeed,
the shorter poems of Catullus seem to me to reveal more of the
142
w *•
PLATK XXII. COIN I'l-ATK I
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
essential Roman than all the rest of Roman literature put
together. We have the innocent pleading of the April lover in :
soles occidere et redire possunt :
nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.*
and the awful simplicity of his wrath at betrayal :
Cseli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia ilia,
ilia Lesbia, quam Catullus unam
plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes,
nunc in quadriuiis et angiportis
glubit magnanimi Remi nepotes.
We have a more genuine-sounding love of nature in his praises
of Sirmio, and a more natural pathos in the famous lament for
his brother, than any other Latin poet can give us. In one
species of composition, the Epithalamium, he is supreme. For
example :
flere desine, non tibi Au-
runculeia, periculum est
nequa femina pulchrior
clarum ab Oceano diem
uiderit uenientem.
talis in uario solet
diuitis domini hortulo
stare flos hyacinthinus.
sed moraris, abit dies :
prodeas, noua nupta.
prodeas, noua nupta, si
iam uidetur, et audias
* Suns may set and rise again ; for us, when once our brief day has waned,
there is one long night to be slept through. Give me a thousand kisses, and
then a hundred, and another thousand, and a hundred to follow yea, and
another thousand— and yet a hundred ! (Carmen, V. 4-9.)
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
nostra uerba. uiden? faces
aureas quatiunt comas :
prodeas noua nupta.*
The music of this, with its beautiful imagery and refrains, is
no doubt based upon an Alexandrian foundation. There is a
distinct echo of Theocritus. But it is also distinctively Italian,
and the greatest of modern Italian poets, Carducci, writes like
a legitimate descendant of Catullus. Catullus has as little
biography as Lucretius. He must have died at an early age in
the fifties B.C. He was a poor man. He had only a town house
and two villas, one on the Lago di Garda and one at Tivoli.
He hated Caesar and loved Cicero. That his "Lesbia" was
the infamous Clodia is generally asserted. I do not believe it.
These two poets, Lucretius and Catullus, then, stand almost
alone as representatives of Republican Roman literature on the
poetical side. Both are Romanising various Alexandrian
Greek modes, but both have something genuinely Roman, a
quality which we may best describe as virility, to add to their
originals. This was the point from which a genuine Roman
literature might have taken its departure. Instead of that, the
next era is that of a courtly school of classicists, largely writing
to order, who gave to Latin its distinctively classical bent.
Cicero, the most classical of all classics, is, however, far the
greatest literary product of the Republic. He is, indeed, far
too vast a figure for these modest pages. By his colossal in-
dustry and immense fertility of genius his influence dominates
the whole field of Latin prose literature. He is not only the
greatest of all orators, but he stands as the type of the orator
in life as in literature. We of this generation, who live in the
eclipse of rhetoric, do not find it easy to be just to him. With
such gifts of eloquence, such a power of uttering tremendous
* Cease to weep, Aurunculeia : Thou need'st not fear that any lovelier maid
should see the bright day coming from Ocean.
Even so the hyacinth is wont to bloom in the rich man's many-coloured
garden. But thou lingerest. The day is passing. Come forth, thou bride.
Come forth, thou bride, now if it please thee, and hear our songs. Look how
the torches shake their golden hair ! Come forth, thou bride.
144
XIII. AUGUSTUS: THE BLACAS CAMEO
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
phrases about duty and patriotism, we cannot but feel affronted
at his political incapacity. Mommsen, who is all for action,
peppers him with contemptuous expressions — "a statesman
without insight, opinion or purpose"; "a short-sighted
egoist"; "a journalist of the worst description"; "his
lawyer's talent of finding excuses — or, at any rate, words — for
everything." And, indeed, among men like Caesar with legions
at their backs, or creatures like Clodius with their packs of
hooligans, a man of golden words and honest principles does
cut a sorry figure on the pages of history — so much the worse
for history ! He had, as we have seen, a policy, his talents made
him a leader among the moderates of the senate, and his
character made him genuinely popular among all the more
respectable classes of society. But Rhetoric is one of the
feminine Muses, and Cicero's nature was as soft and sympa-
thetic as a woman's. So he turns his coat at a word from
Pompeius, utters brave words one day and eats them on the
next, publishes magnificent denunciations which he has not had
the courage to deliver. Moreover, we see his intimate thoughts
revealed in all the frankness of an unexpurgated private corre-
spondence— and there are few statesmen, certainly very few
orators, whose reputations can sustain that test. Thus the
golden words often ring hollow. His vanity is often ludicrous, as
when he writes to Lucceius, to beseech a conspicuous place in his
history, even if the truth has to be distorted for the purpose ; or
when he loiters at Brundisium, with his lictors' rods continually
wreathed in laurel for the futile hope of a triumph. Certainly
he was an egoist. Probably in their private correspondence all
men are. But he was also a gentleman, one of the few Romans
of his day with whom one would care to shake hands in Elysium.
To Mommsen, Caesar is the "sole creative genius" of
Roman history. We may well ask what he created. Cer-
tainly not the empire, for that fell to pieces at his death, and
had to be re-created on a new plan by his successor. Not even
the Gallic province, for though he conquered it, he left the
problem of its organisation to Augustus. Possibly the Lex
K 145
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Julia municipalis. But Cicero* created Latin prose out of
next to nothing and left it to the world as its grandest form
of literary expression. The splendid Latin period, with its
clear logical order, its chain of dependent clauses each in its
place with absolute precision, a thought built of words as a
temple is built of marble, is the best expression of Roman
grandeur, as typical and as enduring as a Roman road or wall.
It was not mere art. It was the natural expression of a Roman
mind trained in law and rhetoric. It was perhaps the finest
thing the Romans ever made, and the Latin period is the true
justification for retaining Latin in its place for the education
of young barbarians accustomed to string their random ideas
together like dish-clouts on a line. Although it was the
result of long training under all the most distinguished masters
of Rome and Greece, and was perfected with infinite labour,
Cicero's style, when once achieved, was extraordinarily rapid
and fluent, as the number of his works can testify. It is true
that, like many great stylists — Dryden, for example — he came
to believe that style was everything. He was prepared to
write a geography of the world or a history of Rome. He
only wanted a few notes from his brother Quintus to write an
account of Britain. His multitudinous philosophical works
were, as we have seen, more style than philosophy, thrown off
in a few months to while away the time at his Tusculan villa
at intervals when the temperature of Rome, literally or politi-
cally, was too high to suit his health. In such work he
may fairly be called a journalist, though a very great one.
When he writes of a subject he really understands, such as
rhetoric, he is at his best. Again, in his forensic speeches or
writings he is much better as an advocate than as a lawyer. His
mind is not capable of juristic precision, he is neither deep nor
subtle, and so far his influence is wholly detrimental in the
history of Roman law. He would probably infuriate a trained
judge ; but give him a jury, and, if possible, a large Italian
one, and he is irresistible, now with translucent rapid narra-
* Plate 15.
146
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
tive, now with clever mystification, breaking off into thundering
appeals to conscience or heaven, or again with passionate
denunciation of his opponent or majestic encomium for his
client. In the senate he is not at his best. We are told that
a few blunt words from Cato had more power to move that
assembly of practical men than all the Catilinarian orations.
But if Rome had been governed as Greece was, by orations in
the market-place, Cicero would have been in Caesar's place as
dictator of the world. Imagine the Roman mob assembling
in 63 B.C. to hear their consul's account of Catiline's flight —
tandem aliquando, Quirites, L. Catilinam, furentem
attdacia, scelus anhelantem, pestem patriae nefarie molientem,
uobis atque huic urbi ferrum flammamque minitantem, ex urbe
uel eiecimus, uel emisimus, uel ipsum egredientem uerbis
prosecuti sumus. abiit, excessit, euasit, erupit. nulla iam
pernicies a monstro illo atque prodigio mcenibus ipsis intra
moenia comparabitur. non enim iam inter latera nostra sica
ilia uersabitur: non in Campo, non in foro, non in Curia, non
denique intra domesticas parietes, pertimescemus *
— his voice screams with passion, or sinks into pathos; pre-
sently he drops into the tones of calm reason or fluent
narrative ; as he nears his peroration his eyes flash, his hands
gesticulate, his body sways from side to side, his foot stamps
the ground, he seems to foam at the mouth :
dolebam, dolebam, patres conscripti, rempublicam uestris
quondam meisque consiliis conseruatam, breui tempore esse
perituram . . . audite, audite, patres conscripti, et cognoscite
reipublicse uolnera. . . .f
* At last, Fellow Citizens of Rome, at last we are quit of Lucius Catiline.
Mad with audacity, panting with iniquity, infamously contriving destruction for
the fatherland, hurling his threats of fire and slaughter against us and our city,
we have cast him forth or driven him forth or escorted him forth on his way with
salutations. Gone, vanished, absconded, escaped ! No more shall disaster be
plotted against our bulwarks from within by that monster, that prodigy of
wickedness. No more shall that dagger threaten our hearts. No more in the
Campus, nor in the forum, nor in the senate-house, no more within the walls of
our own homes, shall he fill us with panic and alarm.
t I was grieved, Fathers and Senators, grieved that the republic once saved
by your exertions and mine should be doomed so shortly to perish. . . . Listen,
listen, Fathers and Senators, listen and learn the wounds of our fatherland !
'47
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
" Why, you did not even stamp your foot ! " he exclaims in
rebuking the coolness of an opposing counsel. It is true that
there were purists of the severer school of Roman oratory who
thought such vehemence meretricious and undignified. The
true Roman eloquence of the old school is to be found in that
ambassador who came to the Carthaginian senate with " peace
or war," gathered in the folds of his mantle and briefly com-
manded them to choose; or that other who drew a circle in
the dust round the Great King and demanded an answer
before he left the circle. Cicero had studied his art both in
the flowery Asiatic and the severer Attic schools. There was
still, his critics complained, too much Asia in his style. But
that was part of the tendency of his age. The austerity of
Cato, with his simple formulae, was gone for ever. The
Romans of this age are more emotional, more sentimental,
more characteristically Southern.
If we reproach Cicero with weakness and cowardice in his
political life, the story of his end may atone for it. After
Caesar's murder, when Antony was master of Rome, a man
utterly unscrupulous and wedded to a still more unscrupulous
wife, Cicero flung away all his timidity and hesitation. Con-
vinced that the consul was trying to re-establish a monarchy,
the old orator came down to the senate and launched at him
the series of ferocious but most eloquent philippics. Some
were spoken, some merely written and published. It was
courting death in the cause of liberty. Cicero was not blind
to the danger he was running. But he is probably sincere
when he says that life has no more attractions for him.
defendi rempublicam adolescens ; non deseram senex :
contempsi Catilinae gladios ; non pertimescam tuos. quin
etiam corpus libenter obtulerim, si repraesentari morte mea
libertas ciuitatis potest; ut aliquando dolor populi Romani
pariat quod iamdiu parturit. etenim si, abhinc prope annos
uiginti, hoc ipso in templo, negaui posse mortem immaturam
esse consulari, quanto uerius nunc negabo seni ! mihi uero,
iam etiam optanda mors est, perfuncto rebus iis quas adeptus
148
PLATE XXIV. AUGUSTUS: THE " PRIMAPORTA" STATUE
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
sum quasque gessi. duo modo haec opto : unum, ut moriens
populum Romanum liberum relinquam ; hoc mihi maius a dis
immortalibus dari nihil potest : alterum ut ita cuique eueniat,
ut de republica quisque mereatur.*
As he foresaw so plainly, the philippics caused his doom.
When the triumvirate drew up its proscription-lists, Octavian is
said to have pleaded for his life. But Antony's wrath was
implacable. Cicero's head and his hands were nailed to the
rostra from which he had so often poured out his rhetoric, and
the virago Fulvia, so the story goes, thrust her needle through
his eloquent, venomous tongue.
Julius Caesar, that miracle of energy, beside being a
competent grammarian and no mean poet, was reputed the
second of Roman orators. Of that we have little means of
judging. Certainly he could quell a mutiny by a speech,
and his Commentaries were not the least wonderful of his
achievements. Professedly they are mere notes for a real
historian — by " historian " the Romans always meant " orator "
— to dress up for literature. They are mere despatches
intended to inform the senate and the world of the progress
of his campaigns. They were written at odd moments in a
prodigiously active life. Their style is so simple and so correct
that we cast them as pearls before the fourth-form schoolboy.
Yet they are in reality a triumphant product of the rhetorical
art; so simple, they must be honest; so modest, they must be
candid. You would scarcely think that they are a defence or a
* As a youth I defended the state ; I will not fail her in my age : I spurned
the swords of Catiline ; I will not tremble at thine. Nay, sirs, I would
gladly give my body to death, if that could assure the liberty of our country and
help the pains of the Roman people to bring the fruit of its long travailing to
birth. Why, nearly twenty years ago in this very temple I declared that death
could not come too soon for a man who had enjoyed a consulship. With how much
more truth shall I declare it in my age ! To me death is already covetable ; I
have finished with those rewards which I have gained and those honours which
I have achieved. Only these two prayers I make : one, that at my death I may
leave the Roman people free (than this nothing greater could be granted by the
immortal gods), and, secondly, that every man may so be requited as he may
deserve at the hands of the republic !
149
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
vindication. In the same easy flow of narrative breathless escapes
are concealed. Who remembers from his schooldays Caesar's
description of that moment, so pregnant with human destiny,
when the eagle first alighted on our shores in the hands of the
gallant centurion of the Tenth Legion ? Caesar seems more
like a Greek than a Roman in his directness as in his reticence.
Fortunately for history Caesar had far more natural curiosity
than most of the Romans. It is surprising how little Cicero
really tells us of Roman or Cilician life in all his voluminous
correspondence. But Caesar went out to explore as well as to
conquer. It may even be true that his visit to Britain was, as
he asserts, partly due to curiosity. He notes our little insular
peculiarities — our custom of sharing wives, our habit of
keeping the hare, the hen, and the goose as pets because our
religion forbids us to eat them. He sees the superior civilisa-
tion of Kent. He observes our clothing of skins, our dyeing
ourselves blue with woad, our long hair and moustaches, our
horsemen and charioteers, our innumerable population and
crowded buildings, our plenteous store of cattle, our metals —
bronze, iron, and tin. He is equally observant in Gaul and
Germany. The debt that history owes to him for these records
is incalculable.
Lesser lights such as Sallust and Nepos dabbled in history
and have had the good fortune to survive. Livy, though he
wrote under Augustus, is a true Republican in mind and
sympathy. His majestic history of Rome is the work of a
rhetorician setting out to extol the glories of the Republic.
Although he sometimes displays a rudimentary critical instinct
in comparing his authorities, his main task was to Latinise
Polybius and to embellish with first-century style the dry
annals of Fabius Pictor and Licinius Macer. It is not the
least of our many grievances against the monks that they
allowed so much of Livy to disappear.
The golden age of classical literature covers this last half-
century of the Republic and the first half-century of the
Empire. There is, on the whole, little trace of division
PLATE XXV. AUGUSTUS AS A YOUTH
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
between the general character of Republican and Imperial
letters except that with Augustus the principal writers are
definitely engaged under the Emperor's banner of reform. The
main characteristic of both is rhetoric and convention. It is
to Alexandria and its state-fostered writing-club that the world
owes convention in literature. The Romans drew their
inspiration from Greece but mainly from Alexandria, and as
literature at Rome was now chiefly in the hands of a clique of
nobles it was possible for a classical style to grow strong
there. Cicero and his friends evolved a style, not only of
literature but even of thought, which could pronounce itself as
" urbane," and all else as barbarian or rustic. Roman literature
of the first centuries before and after Christ was as much
under the domination of epithets like " urbane " and " humane "
as was the literature of the eighteenth century under "elegant"
and " ingenious." Even Livy as an outsider was suspected of
mingling "Patavinity" with his Latinity. It is the aris-
tocracies of literature, such as the court of Louis XIV. or of
Charles II., or such as the coffee-house cliques of Addison's
day or the Johnsonian clubs, which create and maintain our
periods of classical convention.
Literature, as we have already seen occasion to remark,
since it works in the most plastic medium, is generally the first
of the arts to develop ; and literature is only yet beginning.
But then Rome borrowed her arts wholesale from Greece, and
thus her culture has no true infancy. The burning problem
of Roman originality in Art must be reserved until we reach
the Augustan age. For the present we must still deny the
existence of any really spontaneous art growth at Rome during
the Republic. Where native art may be looked for with the
highest probability of finding it is in architecture, portrait-
sculpture, and painting; in architecture, partly because the
Romans had a natural passion for building and partly because
their religious and social habits called for quite distinct types
of construction in palaces, halls, amphitheatres, triumphal
arches, fora, and other secular buildings upon which the Greeks
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
had wasted little of their attention ; in portraiture because it
was a peculiar custom at Rome to make and display images of
their ancestors, whereas the Greeks in their love of the ideal
had until latterly shrunk from the presentation of casual human
lineaments and still idealised them as far as possible, and also
because the Etruscans, who were the first nurses of Roman
culture, had developed portraiture for themselves ; and in
painting, partly owing to the same Etruscan influence and
partly because the Romans, using inferior building materials
such as brick, limestone, and terra-cotta covered with stucco,
were naturally drawn to mural painting for the sake of orna-
ment. But if we look for originality here we are disappointed.
Undoubtedly hundreds of magnificent villas were being run up
all over Italy from Como to Sorrento, but a Roman villa was
more an affair of landscape gardening than of architecture. It
consisted mainly of a series of courts and colonnades sprawling
at large over the ground. The walls were built of coarse tufa
or peperino ; they were only just beginning to be incrusted with
marble slabs. As a city Rome was still contemptible — a
huddled mass of narrow, tortuous alleys. Augustus swept
away as much of it as he could afford to demolish, and his
historians remark that " he found Rome built of brick and left
it built of marble." There were of course ancient temples,
venerable with dignity, and no doubt to us they would have
seemed beautiful with the picturesqueness of antiquity. But
with Gracchans and Marians and Clodians rioting at large
through the city, many of these venerable shrines were destroyed
by fire. The Roman ruins as seen by the modern traveller are
almost all of Imperial times. The great Temple of Jupiter on
the Capitol was rebuilt four times. The round temple of Vesta
was frequently destroyed and restored. Although for religious
reasons the plan of the original was generally preserved in
these rebuildings, the details were in accordance with the style
of the day. Nevertheless the plans are interesting. The
round shrines of Vesta and Mater Matuta* are clearly an archi-
* Plate 44, Fig. 2.
A
PLATE XXVI. AUGUSTUS: BRONZE HEAD, FROM MERGE
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
tectural development from a round hut constructed of wood
with a thatched 'roof. Indeed the Temple of Vesta is said to
have been modelled on the hut of Romulus. It was perhaps
originally the king's house in which the princesses tended the
sacred fire. The Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus also was, if we
may trust the coins, built on an un-Greek plan with three naves
instead of a single nave with aisles.
The only two considerable relics of Republican architecture
are the Tabularium and the Temple of Fortuna Virilis, both
dating from the period of Sulla. In that period, when Rome
had just discovered Greek culture, when the armies of Sulla
and Lucullus came home laden with Greek spoil, there was a
temporary outburst of artistic activity at Rome. It was, how-
ever, entirely in the hands of foreign artists. In 143, Metellus,
the victor of Macedonia, built the first marble temple at Rome
in the Campus Martius. Sulla himself carried off the huge
columns of the unfinished temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens
to adorn the Roman Capitol. The Cyprian Greek Hermodorus
was employed to construct temples and docks. The Romans
had indeed their native principles of building, which from a
merely constructive point of view were in advance of anything
that the Greeks had evolved for themselves. Greek architec-
ture of the best period had been almost exclusively devoted to
the service of religion. Their efforts were almost limited to the
perfecting of the Doric and Ionic temple, and when they had to
build a secular building like the gate of the Acropolis, they were
still content with a mere adaptation of Doric temple to their
new purpose. Their building material was marble, and with
their peculiar artistic discretion the Greeks saw that marble was
at its best in the austere lines of pediment and columns. But the
Romans, before they imported marble, had made a beginning
with brick and cement, which require quite different methods
of architecture. In prehistoric " Servian " days they had dis-
covered or learnt from the Etruscans the use of the vault and
arch, at any rate for tunnels, but it is characteristic of their
artistic poverty that they had made little architectural use of
153
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
these important principles. The triumphal arch seems to have
been a Roman invention, and several triumphal arches were
built in republican days, but unfortunately we have no informa-
tion as to their style. The Sullan revival of art was purely an
importation of foreign models. In the Temple of Fortuna
Virilis built in 78 B.C. we see how the Romans used their
imported architecture.* The graceful Ionic columns support
nothing. They are used for ornament as the West African
native uses his European clothes. The Greeks had indeed
used engaged columns, as in the Erechtheum, to complete the
design where there was no space for a free colonnade, but the
Romans built them into their walls for the sake of ornament.
This is typical. Culture was to the Greeks a vital part of their
existence, to the Romans it was an embellishment.
But Roman architecture, having made this effort, had
relapsed again until the days of the Caesars. There was more
destroying than building in the evil days of Cicero's prime.
The selfish plutocrats were too busy building their villas to
give a thought to the gods' or the city's adornment.
It was much the same with the other arts. Take the coins,
for example. The clumsy copper A s, with the head of Janus
on the obverse and the prow of a ship on the reverse,! had
of old weighed 1 2 ounces. All through republican history it
was gradually shrinking; in 217 B.C. it was fixed at one ounce,
in 89 B.C. at half an ounce. Long before that, however, silver
had taken its place. As we have remarked, silver was not
coined, though no doubt it circulated, at Rome before 268 B.C.
From 2 1 7 onwards silver became the real standard of value, and
about 80 B.C. the copper coinage ceased altogether for a time.
Not only were the original designs of the "heavy copper"
borrowed from Greece, but there is not the least sign in the
Roman coinage of any artistic development as time progresses.
Simply, as Head remarks, " the degree of excellence attained in
any particular district depended upon the closeness of its rela-
tions, direct or indirect, with some Greek city, or at least with
* Plate 1 6. | See page 18
154
• t/ft
PLATE XXVII. M. VIPSANIUS AGRIPPA
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
a population imbued with the spirit of Greek art." There are
coins of Sulla, both silver and gold, doubtless of Greek work-
manship, which display fairly artistic designs.* But the coins
of Antony and Cleopatra, interesting as they are historically,
and designed, of course, in the Hellenised East, are much
inferior.* We notice an attempt at portraiture, but the striking
resemblance between the Roman triumvir and the Egyptian
queen suggests the question which of the pair was the
original.
In sculpture, too, the most ardent supporters of Roman
originality can find little to comfort them in the closing cen-
tury of the Republic. We have seen how the victories of
Mummius and his successors had created a taste and a market
for Greek works of art. With those of Sulla and Lucullus
immense quantities of loot had crossed the Adriatic, and Rome
began to be what New York is now, the home of connoisseurs
and collectors. As connoisseurs are wont to do, the Roman
millionaires studied commercial values rather than artistic
qualities. No doubt in time their taste improved from the
days when Mummius had warned his men that any of the
Greek masterpieces destroyed in transit would have to be
replaced by new ones. But they still went very largely by the
names of the artists : a genuine Praxiteles or Scopas was worth
immense sums. Every villa now required statues for its
adornment — Greek originals, if possible ; if not, copies. For
the most part they were reckoned purely as objects of value
along with handsome tables, vases, bowls, and signet-rings.
When Cicero buys Greek statues he prefers Muses to Bacchantes
as being more appropriate to his studies. The question of
artistic value scarcely enters his mind. The most famous
named sculptor of this period is the Italian-Greek Pasiteles, who
visited Rome about 90 B.C. and there made original statues for
Roman temples. Pasiteles, of course, was of the Hellenic
decline. He was a metal-worker by training, and his work
is like that of Cellini, more decorative than creative. It is
* Plate 22, Nos. 3 and 3.
155
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
jewellery on a large scale. He evolved no new style of his
own, but set himself to copy and elaborate ancient types to
meet the artificial demand for antiquities. Many of the
"archaistic" works in our museums belong to this period of
production, and as decoration many of them are extremely
charming. We have other names of the Pasitelean school, all
Greek, such as Stephanus and Menelaus, but there is very
little originality or interest in them. The Venus Genetrix in
the Louvre is undoubtedly a fine statue, and is probably a
faithful copy of the original by Arcesilaus of the first cen-
tury B.C.* But the face, at any rate, quite visibly goes back to
the Greek sculpture of the fifth century, and perhaps, as has
been suggested, to Alcamenes. It is in the treatment of the
transparent drapery that the present artist shows his skill.
Skill there was in abundance in those Greek chisels of the
first century ; even the Farnese Hercules of Glycon and the
Medici Venus f are astonishing as efforts of chisel-craft, utterly
debased and debasing as they are.
We know from history that portrait statues had long been
common at Rome. The forum was full of them. We saw
in an earlier chapter how the old Etruscans had placed terra-
cotta portraits of the deceased upon their tombs, and how the
old Romans preserved wax images of their forefathers for use
at funerals. Most primitive peoples have an instinctive dread
of portraiture as a sort of blasphemy. Perhaps the early
growth of facial portraiture at Rome was helped by the worship
of a man's genius, his luck, his spirit, his guardian angel.
The genius naturally was depicted in the likeness of the man
himself. So the imagines in a Roman atrium were no mere
portraits of defunct ancestors. Rather they were visible pre-
sentments of invisible presences. Unfortunately very few
unquestionably genuine examples of republican portraiture
have survived. Portraits of ancient celebrities were freely
constructed at all times, and it is not easy to date them. We
have not at Rome as we have in Greece a clear line of artistic
* Plate 18, Fig. i. \ Plate 18, Fig 2.
156
H
f.
a
a .
H »
<: —
a >
- a
s £
< 2
X 0-
3
s
0
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
development which enables the trained archaeologist to date
any casual work of art to within half a century almost at a
glance. It is now a question of employing more or less skilful
Greeks. It is probable that most of the portraits already
illustrated in this book were executed under the Caesars, but
they may well go back to earlier if ruder likenesses, and in any
case the portraits are interesting for their own sake. The
portraits of Julius Caesar, both the white marble bust in the
Vatican Museum* and the still more striking example in black
basalt in the Barracco Museum at Rome, are, however, almost
certainly of contemporary or, at the latest, Augustan date, so
real and vivid is the portraiture. There is another very fine
black basalt head of Julius in Berlin,f but its authenticity has
been questioned. It certainly corresponds very closely with the
profile of the dictator on his coins.J The bust of M. Brutus
may also be identified by comparison with the coins. That of
Cicero is probable but not so certain.
This art of realistic portraiture, then, is claimed as the
great contribution of ancient Rome to artistic progress. It
yet remains to be shown that any part of the work was done
by native artists. At present the evidence is all in favour of
Greek authorship. But the Romans may claim the credit of
demanding or even inspiring realism. Roman archaeologists,
especially those who, like Wickhoff and Mrs. Strong, are con-
cerned to plead the cause of Roman originality in art, often
seem to assume that the Greeks of the best period could not
express individuality, in fact that the ideal tendency of their
statues, portraits included, is due to convention if not to the
sheer limitations of their craftsmanship. Elsewhere we have
seen that much of the apparent simplicity of Greek work of
the best period is really elaborate self-restraint. All their
religious ideas forbade them to express divinity with any marks
of time or place upon face or feature. So when it came — as it
came slowly — to portraying a statesman like Pericles, or a
monarch like Alexander, they deliberately honoured them by
* Plate 20, Fig. i. f Plate 19. J Plate 22, Fig. 4.
'57
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
idealising them and smoothing away the accidentals. Thus
they concealed the inordinately long skull of Pericles by
depicting him in a helmet. They could be realistic enough
when they chose to be, but that was never in the adornment
of temples except just so far as to indicate the barbarity of
Centaurs or Giants in contrast to the perfection of the Greek.
Myron's Cow has perished without offspring, but the slave-
boys on the tombstones are realistic enough — to say nothing
of the Ludovisi Reliefs. Realism was no new discovery of
the Romans. On the contrary, so far as it was an innovation
it was an act of indulgence, a breaking down of self-imposed
barriers. Even then, was it inspired by any abstract passion
for the naked truth, such as moved Cromwell to command his
portrait-painter to include the warts? Not entirely. The
Romans were a rhetorical, not a realistic people. I believe
that Roman realism in portraiture is chiefly due to the national
custom of preserving the imagines taken from the death-masks
of the illustrious dead. On Greek soil the Greek artists were
still idealising their portraits — witness the fine head of Mithra-
dates on the coins of Pontus ; * but when their Roman sitters
asked for realism they gave it — gave it sometimes with the
unexpected thoroughness of Mr. Sargent. Besides coins and
statues there are very fine portraits on the gems of the first
century B.C.
Towards painting too we saw that the Romans had in-
herited some traditional bent. We hear of Greek painters
highly esteemed at Rome in this period as well as of imported
Greek pictures fetching enormous prices. The Romans loved
colour, and their villa walls were commonly stuccoed and
painted, if not incrusted with marble, while their floors began
to be inlaid with pictorial mosaic. But we have little or
nothing of this date to show. It should, however, be noted
that the graphic taste of the Romans together with their habit
of treating art as mere decoration was now leading to a new
phase of pictorial sculpture which will have important effects
* Plate 22, No. i.
158
«
PLATE XXIX. TWO VIEWS OF THE PONT DU CARD
LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
in the bas-relief work of the Augustan period. In revenge
Italy was now turning out a system of plastic decoration for
vases in the Aretine pottery * which was new and full of
possibilities.
On the whole the verdict must go against Rome — at any
rate republican Rome — as regards artistic originality. The
Rome of Cicero's day was amazingly rich and dreadfully poor.
It had a high culture in some respects, but it was too corrupt,
morally and politically, to produce good work of its own. If
there had been any possible rival in the field, Rome would
assuredly have perished in the course of that distracted
century. If she had perished then, what would she have left to
the world? A few second-hand comedies, Lucretius, Catullus,
and Cicero ; a small equivalent for all the blood that she had
shed, and all the groans of her provincials.
* Plate 21,
159
IV
AUGUSTUS
ultima Cumasi uenit iam carminis aetas ;
magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna ;
iam noua progenies cselo demittitur alto.
VERGIL.
ERGIL'S Fourth Eclogue, irqqi
which my text is quoted, is often
called the "Messianic Eclogue." It
is a strange poem. In the midst of a
book of pastoral eclogues very closely
modelled on the Idylls of Theocritus,
the young poet from Mantua inserts
one in which he invites the Sicilian
Muses, that is, the Muses of Theo-
critus, to assist him in a loftier strain
than usual. His poem is a vision,
a prophecy of a return of the golden age to accompany the
birth of a child. It is not easy to determine what child. The
poem was written for the consulship of Pollio, who had
helped Vergil to recover his paternal farm. Thus it is very
probable that the poem was really a piece of very gross
flattery directed to a patron. Nevertheless the prophecies
of peace on earth which it foreshadows chime so strangely
with the Messianic language of Isaiah that the scholars
of the Middle Ages alternatively placed Vergil among the
prophets or condemned him as a wizard. But apart from
that approaching event to be witnessed in an obscure village
of the client-princedom of Judaea there was even in secular
1 60
X
X
AUGUSTUS
history a general expectation of better days to come. The
Virgin Justice did in sober fact return to the Roman world
when Octavian, in 29 B.C., came home to celebrate his triumph
over the three continents.
I make high claims for Octavian* — or as he may now
be called by anticipation "Augustus" — in history. Julius
Caesar has usurped the credit of inventing that wonderful system
the Roman Empire. The credit really belongs to Augustus.
Monarchy, indeed, had for two generations at the least become
inevitable at Rome, as everybody, from Catiline to Cicero, was
bound to admit. In the scramble to realise it Julius Caesar had won
the day and had thereupon proceeded to introduce his conception
of its proper form. He died before his plans were perfected and
we have no means of knowing his inner purpose. But we know
that he had spurned the dignity of the senate, had taken some of
the paraphernalia of royalty and set up his statue alongside of the
old kings of Rome. His plan of a naked despotism had failed,
because he had not reckoned with the tyrannicide sentiment of
the Roman nobles. His assassination was no mere episode or
accident. It was impossible to live like an oriental despot in the
republican city without an oriental bodyguard. Julius Caesar
had failed through pride. When he fell, the whole dreary
round of proscriptions, triumvirate, and civil wars had to begin
again. The inevitable monarchy had to be devised afresh on
a different basis : that was the task of Augustus. He devised
it in such a manner that it lasted in the West for just five
centuries and in the East for nearly fifteen. Indeed it can
hardly be said to be totally extinct now in the twentieth.
Judged by results then, the work of Augustus was clearly a
consummate piece of statesmanship. When we consider the
methods by which that result was obtained we shall, I think,
esteem Augustus as the greatest statesman in the history of the
world.
Augustus has never been a popular hero. The pure states-
man who has no dashing feats of arms to his credit, and who
* Frontispiece, and Plates 23, 24, 25, 26.
L 161
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
has left us no records of impassioned eloquence, does not
lend himself to idealisation. Augustus had no contemporary
biographer, nor even any very great historian ancient or
modern. The early Empire is in the gap between the end of
Mommsen and the beginning of Gibbon. Dr. Gardthausen
has collected all the available material about Augustus but has
scarcely succeeded in making him clear or real to us as a man.
Tacitus touched him off in a few satirical epigrams as the
crafty tyrant who "bribed the army with gifts, the populace
with cheap corn, and the world with the blessings of peace, and
so grew greater by degrees while he concentrated in his own
hands the functions of the senate, the magistrates, and the
laws." For biographical particulars we have to go to Sueto-
nius's Lives of the Twelve Ccesars, a most unsatisfactory source.
Suetonius's pages teem with human interest, but for purposes
of history they are provoking and baffling. He is a patient
bookworm who compiles systematic little biographies without
a glimmer of the biographical sense. As imperial librarian he
had access to most valuable sources of information but he had
no critical instinct in using them. He simply collected scraps
from various sources and grouped them under headings. For a
list of virtues he would go to a courtier's panegyrics and then
turn to a seditious pamphlet for a catalogue of vices. His own
instinctive preference being for scandal, he has touched nothing
which he has not defiled. It is chiefly due to Suetonius
that Augustus appears as a selfish hypocrite, Tiberius as a
libidinous tyrant, Gaius as a maniac, Claudius as a pedantic
clown, and Nero as a monster of wickedness. And yet under
these five reigns the Empire was growing steadily in peace and
prosperity. The rulers who were omnipotent cannot have been
altogether such as they are described. The factious senators
who still dreamed of unreal republican glories and still
treasured the memories of Cato as a saint and Brutus as a
martyr were not, of course, allowed free criticism of their
monarchs. They revenged themselves by writing secret libels,
many but not all of which logic and common sense can easily
162
in
Y-
X
AUGUSTUS
disprove. When it came to popular reigns like those of
Vespasian or Hadrian the censorship of the press was removed
for a time, and then the senatorial Republicans like Tacitus
and Juvenal took ample revenge upon the dead. The scurrilous
pamphlets were unearthed and exalted into historical documents
and so passed down to our historians as history. It is a
suspicious and thankless task to attempt the rehabilitation of
these emperors. The world is rightly sceptical of the process
which it calls "whitewashing." Moreover the necessary data
are wanting. We can only allow our imaginations to suggest
how different the story would look if it had been told from a
sympathetic point of view.
It is very difficult to form any complete idea of the
character of Augustus as a man. He had shown daring and
ambition when as an obscure lad he had crossed to Italy in
44 B.C. to take up his perilous inheritance as Caesar's heir.
He had been cool and diplomatic even in those earliest days in
the way he intrigued with the senate against Antony, and then
with Antony and Lepidus against the senate. He had had
extraordinary luck when both the consuls died in the engage-
ments round Modena, and left him, the praetor, in charge of a
great army. Then we have the infamous acts of the trium-
virate, when the unfortunate senators and knights were pro-
scribed in hundreds, and Cicero, with whom the young Caesar
had been on intimate terms, was handed over without apparent
compunction to Antony's vengeance. Admirers said that in
this he was overborne by his older colleague, and yielded
reluctantly to a stern necessity for destroying the tyrannicide
party. Enemies declared that even if he had been reluctant to
begin the bloodshed he was the most cruel of persecutors when
it started. In the fourteen years of civil war that followed, he
had succeeded in winning his way through to victory more by
coolness and luck than by any display of generalship. I do
not think that we can fairly accuse him of cowardice. It was
a bold act when he rode alone and unarmed into the camp of
the rebellious and hostile Lepidus, and took his legions away
163
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
from him without a blow. He had not the dashing gallantry
of Antony, or the fiery vigour of Julius, but he must have
had the gift of nerve and coolness. He had certainly come
through the most terrible difficulties and dangers from open
enemies and rebellious armies by land and sea. In the last
duel with Antony luck had been with him once more. Like
the rake and gambler that he was, Antony had thrown away
his game for the sake of Eastern ambitions and Eastern
dalliance. Then there was that last scene of Cleopatra's
tragedy, when the conqueror came to her palace after Antony
had committed suicide. She tried to win him by the same
arts that had won his "father" and his rival. Dressed in her
finest robes she came weeping to him, and displayed the picture
and the letters of Julius wet with her tears. He judged her
splendour coldly as a future ornament for his triumph at
Rome, and when she disappointed him of that by a suicide
staged as all her life had been for theatrical effect, he hunted
down her two elder children with the same cold ferocity
as before. Policy forbade them to survive. That was all he
thought of.
And now at the age of thirty-four, with this record behind
him, he had come back to Rome to celebrate his many triumphs.
No doubt the few remaining nobles at Rome trembled at
his coming. Remembering the proscriptions some of them
might well tremble, especially those who had sided with
his enemies, with Sextus Pompeius, or with L. Antonius, or
with Marcus. On the other hand, some might remember the
clemency which Julius Caesar had displayed in his hour of
triumph.
Augustus had to restore confidence and order in a shattered
world. He had to deal with provinces ruined and desolate, a
form of government quite visibly obsolete, an aristocracy with
immense traditions of pride and power now thoroughly corrupt
and effete, a Roman mob which still called itself lord of the
world, but which was in a political sense hopeless, armies
which were dangerous to the state, conscious of their power
164
X
X
J
5
AUGUSTUS
and destitute of real patriotism. He had at his side a trusty
general in Agrippa,* who had won many battles for him, though
that in itself was generally a dangerous circumstance, and an
astute diplomat in Maecenas, who for the past ten years had
been governing Rome in Caesar's name without holding any
clear official position. But beyond these two it was hard to
know where to turn for support. The civil wars and proscrip-
tions had almost destroyed the race of Brutus, but all that was
left of the aristocracy was still jealous and hostile under a cover
of abject sycophancy, ready to stab him with their tongues if
they had not the courage to use the stiletto. Nevertheless,
Augustus had one great asset. The Roman world, exhausted
with a whole generation's civil war, was longing for repose. It
was ready to fall down and worship the man who would give
it that. Thus the broad outlines of his policy were clear
before him. He must undertake a work of healing. The fall
of Julius warned him that he must not be openly a monarch,
but the failure of Sulla and the actual state of Rome were
equally eloquent to prove that he must retain the power in his
own hands. In the lassitude following upon grave illness — for
the dangers and exposure of the civil wars had shattered his
health — he may have cherished occasional thoughts of a real
abdication. But in his brain he must have known that it was
impossible. It was, of course, equally impossible for him to
govern the whole world directly without help. For that pur.
pose the machinery of the whole constitution with its senate and
magistracies had to be preserved, at any rate for the present.
These were the broad lines upon which his policy was shaped.
The splendour of Caesar's triumph must have confirmed the
Romans' impression that they had now a king. For three
days they saw a constant procession of prisoners, emblems of
captured cities and conquered princes. Some of Cleopatra's
surviving children were among his train. The three days
were apportioned to the three continents, the first for the
Illyrian war of 34, the second for Actium, and the third for
* Plate 27.
'65
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Egypt. Cartloads of money from the Egyptian treasury rolled
up the streets, and the bank rate at Rome fell instantly from
eleven to four. There was one significant change. In old
republican days the victor had been led into the city by his
colleague and the senators, now they followed humbly in the
rear. Lavish triumphal gifts were distributed : about £\ i to
every soldier, and about ^4 to every citizen. Even the boys
got a present in the name of Caesar's dear young nephew
Marcellus. Thus Caesar passed in his gold-embroidered purple
toga, with a laurel branch in his hand, while a slave stood
behind holding a golden crown of victory over his head. Of
the horses that drew the chariot one was mounted by the
fourteen-year-old Marcellus, famous for his early death, and
for Vergil's beautiful lines about him, and the other by his
still younger stepson, Tiberius. Thus he was drawn up to the
Capitol to deposit his laurels and his costly offerings at the feet
of Jupiter.
There were festivities on many a day to follow. Temples
were dedicated, one to the deified Julius and one to Venus, the
goddess mother of the Julian house. There were games in
which the foreign captives fought to the death. On another day
the boys of the nobility fought a Battle of Troy in the circus.
On another there was a great beast-hunt of strange animals
from Egypt when the rhinoceros and hippopotamus made their
first appearance in Europe. And then for the first time for
nearly two hundred years, that is, for the first time since the
Punic Wars, the temple of the war-god Janus was solemnly
closed. L? Empire c'est la paix. There are many signs of the
earnest longing for Peace in the Roman world. " Pax " and
" Irene" became common names in the West and East; " Pax"
was the legend on coins. This was a new thing at Rome.
Hitherto war had been the desired as well as the normal
condition. But even the Romans had now drunk their fill of
bloodshed in those dreary civil wars. It was upon this new
condition of things that Augustus had the wisdom to build his
monarchy. The army was greatly reduced at once. Fortu-
166
FIG. I. ARCH OF MARIUS, ORANGE
FIG. 2. S. LOKKN2O, MILAN-
PLATE xxxin
Br<.fi
AUGUSTUS
nately the treasury of Egypt enabled them to be dismissed with-
out dissatisfaction. The foreign hirelings who had served as a
bodyguard were replaced by native soldiers. A change in the
imperatoSs form of address to his troops indicated that they
were now subject to the civil rule of a constitutional state:
henceforth they were not "fellow-soldiers" but "soldiers."
And now the work of reconstruction began in earnest. Act-
ing merely as one of the two consuls and in obedience to a
law passed through the senate and comitia, Augustus restored
the depleted ranks of the patrician order. It is true that the
patricians had no political privileges but they still had great
significance in the domain of religion and their restoration as
the first official act of the new regime marked a deliberate
desire to conciliate the aristocracy and enlist its services in
support of order. Then a census of the Roman citizens was
taken for the first time in forty years. The number found was
4,063,000 heads, which was to be increased by 170,000 in the
next twenty years. The census and purification of the people
was accompanied by a revision of the senate-roll. Here
Augustus already showed his intention to break away from the
policy of Julius. Whereas Julius had aroused the most bitter
resentment by introducing provincials and common soldiers
into the ranks of the senate, and Antony also had secured the
appointment of all sorts of disreputable friends of his own,
Augustus with infinite caution and tact reduced, strengthened,
and purified the roll. Then since the numbers had been
reduced and it was necessary to secure a respectable quorum
for the transaction of business, the senate was induced to pass
a standing order that its members must not go abroad even to
the provinces without permission of its president. As Caesar
was the president it meant a concentration of all the possible
leaders of opposition at Rome and under his eye. During
this same year, 28 B.C., the other side of Augustan rule came
into prominence, the splendid liberality which turned Rome
from a decaying and ruinous city of brick into a city of marble
and made this epoch to stand out next to that of Pericles as
167
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
an age of brilliant culture. No fewer than eighty-two temples
were built or restored in that year. Among the rest a magnifi-
cent marble temple to Apollo with a public library annexed
to it was erected on the Palatine. Libraries were new and
significant things at Rome. The first had been built by Vergil's
patron Asinius Pollio only nine years earlier.
The time was now ripe for the all-important settlement of
the constitution which historians have agreed to call the estab-
lishment of the Empire. It is important to narrate the actual
proceedings, at this point, somewhat more minutely than the
scope of this work generally allows. The establishment of the
Empire was such a delicate and equivocal act that it has been
open to various interpretations ever since. Probably in the
clever brain of Augustus it was intended to be equivocal from
the first, so that republican aristocrats at Rome might still
believe themselves to be free, while the populace had a prince
to whom they might look for their patron, and the provincials,
particularly those of the orient, might have a splendid monarch
for their instincts of adulation.
Towards the close of the year 28 Augustus had issued a
proclamation formally reversing all the illegal acts of himself
and his colleagues during the Triumvirate. It would not call
the dead back to life, it would not restore Cicero to the senate,
it did not even give back the land to the burghers of those
eighteen confiscated townships. But it marked contrition, and
restitution of some sort was to follow. At the beginning of
his seventh consulship on January 13, 273.0., Caesar convened
a meeting of the senate and made them a long speech in which
he spoke with pride of his own and his "deified father's"
benefactions to the state. At the end, with a true Italian
instinct for the theatre he turned to the astonished fathers and
exclaimed: "And now I give back the Republic into your
keeping. The laws, the troops, the treasury, the provinces
are all restored to you. May you guard them worthily." Dio
Cassius, who has given us a long speech certainly of his own
composition, paints the mingled feelings of the audience, the
1 68
PLATE XXXIV. BARBARIAN WOMAN, '""
KNOWN AS "THUSNELDA"
AUGUSTUS
indifference of those who were in the secret, the uneasiness of
those who feared that it was another trap to catch the unwary
and the joy of those who believed and hoped. The immediate
reply of the senate was, it appears, to grant him further honours
— the " civic crown " of oak leaves awarded to one who had
saved the life of a fellow-citizen, in token that Augustus had
saved the lives of all his countrymen, and laurel-trees to be
planted at his gate in sign of perpetual victory. * Then they
conducted a long and solemn debate upon the proper cognomen
to be conferred upon their saviour and at length decided upon
the name "Augustus." In these proceedings we have the
measure of the Augustan senate. Already they had the instinct
of courtiers. Augustus knew it, and therefore knew what he
was about in this dramatic "restoration of the Republic."
Coins of the period bear the legend "Respublica restituta,"
and Ovid, though a courtier, was free to say
redditaque est omnis populo prouincia nostro
et tuus Augusto nomine dictus auus.
Augustus himself records this occurrence in the great inscrip-
tion, in which he afterwards described his achievements : " In
my sixth and seventh consulship, when by universal consent I
had acquired complete dominion over everything both by land
and sea, I restored the State from my own control into the
hands of the Senate and People."
A few sessions later, but still in the beginning of the year
27, the senate decided upon its real answer, no doubt concocted
at the suggestion of Augustus. The senate accepted the
restitution of most of the provinces, and undertook to govern
them for the future by means of senatorial magistrates very
much as they had been governed of old. But three provinces
which were still unsettled, and required soldiers, and money,
and a general, called for special treatment. Csesar was there-
fore entreated to take for his province Syria, Gaul, and Spain.
Gaul was not yet completely organised; besides Julius had
* See Frontispiece.
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
publicly imposed the task of adding Britain to it upon his
successor. Syria was of the utmost importance, because the
Parthians were still "riding unavenged" flushed with fresh
victories over Antony. This was another of the legacies of
Julius. Spain was still largely unconquered and in great
disorder. I think, in opposition to Ferrero, that military
needs were more powerful than economic motives in the
selection of these provinces. It is to be noted that there was
no question of the restitution of Egypt. Caesar had never
completely given this kingdom to the state. He still kept it
for the sake of its treasures, as a private domain, and governed
it through an agent, a mere knight, not even a senator. Over
these three great provinces Augustus received consular
authority — much as Pompeius had received it for the war
against the pirates — for ten years. But at the same time he
promised to restore these provinces also, as soon as they should
be completely pacified. The ingenious nature of the whole
compromise will be manifest when it is perceived that this
arrangement of provinces left the senate with scarcely a single
legion under its command, while the bulk of the Roman army
was concentrated in Caesar's provinces.
Now let us consider the constitutional position of Augustus
in these years from 27 to 23, when a slight rearrangement was
effected. Augustus continued each year to be elected consul
with a colleague for one year, until he had far outstripped even
the record of Marius. In addition to this he had " consular
power" over his enormous province, which included all the
armies of the state. That power was ostensibly granted for
ten years, but as a matter of fact it was renewed with some
ceremony at intervals of ten or five years throughout the
reign. Constitutionally he was by no means master of the
world although, of course, he was so in reality. He says
himself: "I excelled all in prestige, but of authority I had no
more than my colleagues in each office." For the maintenance
of his domestic dignity, he had in addition to the consulship
various privileges of tribunidan authority. His person was
170
AUGUSTUS
protected by the sanctity of that office, and it is probable that
all prosecutions for treason were taken on that point. He was
also chief priest. He was also president of the senate, princess
senatus, but that simply meant that his name came first on the
roll, so that he had the right to speak first. Only when Caesar
said "aye" it would be a bold man who would say "no."
For the lawyer this exhausts his titles to power, but in
reality he was something very much more than consul with
tribunician powers. The one word that embraces all his
authority, constitutional and real alike, is the word "princeps."
"Princeps" is not the title of any office, it merely expresses
dignity. He is " the chief," he is " Caesar the August, the son
of the God Julius, ten times hailed as general." It is histori-
cally misleading to speak of these early principes as " Emperors,"
for that word implies notions of purple and crowns really
foreign to their position, Any stout republican who chose to
be deceived could still boast that he was governed by senate
and comitia, by consuls, praetors, aediles, tribunes, and the rest
of them. It is even historically false to believe that the senate
and magistrates had ceased to exist for practical purposes.
They had, as we shall presently see, a very real function in the
state, especially when Caesar was abroad, as in the earlier years
of his rule he constantly was. It was impossible for one man
to govern the whole empire. Little by little when a complete
imperial bureaucracy was evolved, the senate really sank into
insignificance, but for the present Caesar and the senate were
to some extent colleagues in the government of the empire.
It is equally unhistorical to assert, as does the foremost of
living historians in Germany, Dr. Eduard Meyer, that this
" Restoration " was a genuine abdication, and that Caesar only
continued to act as the senate's executive officer. Sometimes
he did act in that capacity, often he made a pretence of so
acting. Especially when there was anything disagreeable to be
done, he liked to get it authorised by a decree of the senate.
But no intelligent Roman can have failed to perceive that there
was no real equilibrium between Caesar and Senate. Csesar
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
had not only the control of nearly all the legions, but at the
very gate of Rome he had the only troops in Italy, the praetorian
guard, at his beck and call. Roman generals had always had
their life-guards. The law forbade the presence of an army at
Rome, but Caesar had shown his usual ingenuity in circum-
venting the spirit of the law, while respecting its letter. An
army meant a legion, and a legion consisted of ten cohorts
generally of three hundred men each. Very well, Caesar would
only have nine cohorts. But as each consisted of a thousand
men, he found himself in command of a force equal to three
legions in permanent quarters at the gates of Rome. If he
thus had the men, he had the money too. The senatorial
provinces were now, thanks to a long regime of senatorial
governors, mostly the poor ones. Caesar had the enormous
treasury of Egypt in his pocket, Spain was rich in undeveloped
mines, and Gaul had great possibilities as yet unexploited.
Moreover, Augustus had inherited an immense patrimony from
Julius, and the legacies of admiring friends also increased his
wealth. Thus it came about that the senatorial treasury
simply could not exist without help from the imperial purse.
His private wealth, too, enabled him to keep the Roman mob
happy with cheap or free corn, public shows, and handsome
buildings, and to satisfy the troops with lavish bounties.
There was no real equilibrium.
On the other hand, Augustus was very careful not to wound
republican sensibilities. He was himself of a distinctly his-
torical and antiquarian turn of mind. He never performed
a function or assumed an office without assuring himself that it
was not new to the constitution. Thus when he was asked to
undertake censorial duties he declined the "censorial authority,"
which the senate conferred upon him, but carried out the duties
by virtue of his power as consul, having assured himself that in
the olden times consuls had performed the duties of the
censor. He was also most punctilious in his use of forms.
We shall see later something of the republican simplicity of
his mode of life. He never failed, as his "divine father"
172
FIG. I. -ALTAR OF THE LARES OF AUGUSTUS
*J<0**'-
Fir;. 2. SACRIFICIAL SCENE, FROM TIIR " ARA PACIS
PLATE XXXV
AUGUSTUS
Julius had done, to treat the senate with outward marks of
respect. Call him a "crafty tyrant" if you will. It is much
more just to call him a diplomatic reformer engaged in a neces-
sary work of repair, working it with infinite patience, tact,
and subtlety, by the most ingenious system of compromises
known to history.
In the year 23 B.C. there was a slight and not very impor-
tant readjustment of the constitutional situation. After his
return from a troublesome war in Spain, and after a very
serious illness which had brought him to the brink of death, he
formally abdicated the consulship, alleging his ill-health as the
motive. It was, indeed, more than a pretence. The continual
tenure of the consulship involved a continual series of cere-
monial duties, which added to the immense burdens of his
position. But there..were political motives as well. He was
now in his eleventh consulship, and for a nation of antiquarians
it was distinctly unpleasant that any man should compile a list
of this magnitude. Moreover, the consul had to have an
apparently equal colleague, and there was no longer at Rome
an unlimited supply of nobles fit to be Caesar's colleagues.
Besides, it blocked the road to honour, it was difficult to find
men of consular rank for the consular provinces. More than
all, it was unnecessary. Therefore in order that he might not
be molested with reproaches, he retired to his Alban Villa, and
sent a letter to the senate not only renouncing the consulship,
but suggesting as his successor a notorious republican, who
had fought for Brutus against him, and still honoured the
memory of Brutus as a martyr in the cause of liberty.
That this was another solemn farce, or rather another deep
stroke of statecraft, is quite clear. The senate replied by
offering him the very powers he needed to maintain his real
position unimpaired. The consular power over the provinces
was continued without any new enactment as "proconsular."
He received certain additional powers inherent in the tribunate,
and henceforth dates his years of rule not by consulships, but
years of tribunician power. His imperium over the provinces
173
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
was defined as "superior" to that of other magistrates, and
he received the special right which belonged to the consuls of
proposing a motion at any meeting of the senate. Practically,
then, he was relieved of some tiresome duties, his position was
made to look more republican, and at the same time he had
increased rather than diminished his authority.
By this time the principate had taken its permanent form.
Its powers vary considerably with the varying force of the in-
dividual emperors, and it tends by mere prescription as well as
by the development of an administrative hierarchy of officials
to grow more absolute as the years advance. But consti-
tutionally very little change was made in the course of the
next three centuries. It always remained a compromise, and
something of illegitimacy always clung to it. From time to
time the senate actually remembered that it was a governing
council. It had always to be reckoned with. As for the
comitia of the Populus Romanus, they continued to exist both
for legislation and elections as long as Augustus was alive.
But in reality the princeps had taken the place of the people in
the government of Rome. Tiberius, the next successor of
Augustus, suppressed the comitia as unnecessary, and though
once or twice in later times an antiquarian emperor might get
a plebiscite passed for the sake of old times, the Populus
Romanus was extinct. It perished without a groan.
The personality of a monarch had been thrust almost sur-
reptitiously into the frame of a republican constitution. Skil-
fully as it had been done, the illegitimacy of the proceedings
entailed certain awkward consequences. There could be no
open talk of a succession. Thus when Augustus recovered
from his grave illness in 23 B.C. he offered to read his will to
the senate to prove that he had nominated no successor. On
the contrary, he had formally handed to Piso, the other consul,
a written statement of the disposition of the forces and the
moneys in the treasury. That was true enough, but he had
handed his signet ring, the ring by virtue of which Maecenas
had governed Rome for ten years, to Agrippa, the man who
174
22
u
o,"
D
O
AUGUSTUS
would certainly have taken his place if he had died at that time.
In reality there is little doubt that in his own mind Augustus
had planned to make young Marcellus, the brilliant child of
his beloved sister Octavia, his heir and successor. That this
ultimate intention was plain to Agrippa when Caesar recovered
is shown by Agrippa's sulky retirement into private life.
Although Augustus could not directly or legally nominate a
successor, he could train a young prince for the succession,
and in his own lifetime raise him to such a point of honour
that he would naturally step into the vacant place. The newly
born Empire had the great good fortune that Augustus, in
spite of his feeble health, lived to a ripe age and held the
principate for forty-one years. But it had the misfortune to be
governed by a sterile race. Not for a hundred years until
Titus, did a son succeed his father. Augustus had nephews,
stepchildren, and grandchildren, but he had only one child by
his three wives, and she was the immoral Julia. All his life
long he was vexed with tiresome dynastic problems, and each
youth whom he selected for his successor seemed to be destined
to a premature death. At the last he was driven sorely against
his will to nominate his stepson Tiberius. This fact is
mentioned here because it is surely a vital fact in determining
the future of the principate. If each of the first half-dozen
holders of that office had been surrounded by a blooming
family on the scale of modern royalty, it is very likely that the
principate would have settled down quietly into a hereditary
monarchy. As it was, the whole system was upset by continual
intrigues for the succession, often leading to actual civil war-
fare. Thus the army and the praetorian guard came to acquire
its fatal domination over Roman politics.
THE SENATE
For all his moderation Augustus had successfully gathered
all the strings of policy into his own hands. In his three
revisions of the senate-list he succeeded in securing a body
absolutely subservient to his wishes, and the only trouble it
175
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
caused him was by its excess of zeal for his dignity. As a rule
it merely registered his decrees, conferred honours on the
kinsmen he delighted to honour, and sometimes shouldered
the responsibility for an unpopular proposal. It was to some
extent a safety-valve for the expression of public opinion, but
the more tyrannical emperors (and Augustus undoubtedly
became more absolute as his system developed) kept a very
tight hand upon it. When an embassy came from an indepen-
dent foreign power, such as Parthia, it went first to a powerful
senator, just as in republican days to seek a patronus or
champion. Now that champion was, of course, none other than
the princeps. By him the ambassadors were introduced to the
senate, who heard their case and deliberated upon it. As of
old, they would necessarily entrust the settlement of the matter
to a commissioner chosen from their own body. Again, the
commissioner was of course the princeps. The senate some-
times undertook state impeachments as a high court of justice,
but now it was only Caesar's enemies whom they impeached,
and in one case — that of the prefect of Egypt — they displayed
an excess of zeal in Caesar's cause which brought down a
rebuke upon their heads. The senate was used often as a
medium of publication. Caesar would go down to the house
and read a speech to them when he intended to reach a wider
public. When he was abroad, he would send regular reports
and despatches to them. Caesar, like all Roman magistrates,
had his consilium or board of advisers. This was now
organised to consist of so many representative senators, who
sat in conjunction with the young princes of the imperial house,
and any other important people whom Caesar might select for
his privy council. Towards the end, when Augustus grew old
and infirm, a committee of senators sitting in the palace was
competent to transact business. But as a rule he was very
careful to respect the senatorial traditions. Decrees of the
senate and laws were passed with all the old formalities, but
now they were all in reality Caesar's laws and Caesar's decrees.
On the whole, however, we may well believe that the senate's
176
(.A
AUGUSTUS
decline into impotence was largely its own fault. So far as the
records show, the Augustan senate never displayed the least
trace of spirit or, if that is too much to expect, even of initiative
or efficiency. There was grumbling and a little feeble plotting,
but if the senate had chosen to take Augustus at his word when-
ever he spoke of abdication, they might easily have recovered
real power, though indeed they could not have done without a
princeps. For one thing the mob would not have suffered
it. Caesar was, and remained, the patron of the inarticulate
commons, and that was not only the origin of the principate
but the main support of its power throughout. When we speak
of unpopular emperors such as Nero or Domitian we generally
mean only that they were unpopular with the notables of the
senate. If they failed to retain the regard of the common
people and the common soldiers their reigns speedily came to
an end. Caesar's pretended abdication in 23 B.C. was shortly
afterwards followed by a famine at Rome and the populace
besieged the senate-house, threatening it with fire unless fresh
powers were conferred upon their champion.
German historians have invented the term Dyarchy to
describe the balance of power between Caesar and senate. The
government of Rome had always been to some extent a Dyarchy
of senate and people as its title shows — " Senatus Populusque
Romanus." In many respects the princeps had taken the place
of the people. But such a description loses sight of reality.
You cannot in this whole period show an army set in motion
by a senatorial governor without authority from Augustus,
save in the single case of M. Primus when it was instantly
followed by a prosecution ; nor a single tax imposed, nor a law
so much as proposed without Caesar's authority, nor a candidate
elected without his concurrence, nor a treaty made otherwise
than in accordance with his suggestion. The true relation
between them is practically that of a monarch and his council.
Three times Caesar revised the roll of the senate, reducing it
from over one thousand members to six hundred, and for all
his tact and ingenuity arousing the fiercest resentment. There
M 177
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
were violent scenes in the house, Augustus wore a shirt of
mail, and went accompanied by ten stalwart senators. It is
clear that he was purging the house of his opponents just as
Cromwell did. On other occasions he would present his
friends with the amount of property needed to complete their
qualification for the senate. Thus it is no exaggeration to
call the senate his council of state. If it is objected that the
senate still governed rich and important provinces, that is more
apparent than true. No longer did the governor of a senatorial
province go out girt with the sword that signifies imperium
or wearing the military cloak. Now he goes in his toga as
a mere civilian functionary. That little change must have
been bitterly galling to the proud aristocracy. Augustus had
persuaded them to pass an ordinance forbidding them to go
abroad without his permission. He made them fine their
members for non-attendence, and it is highly significant that
it was difficult to keep a quorum of the senate for public
business. He chose his own order for asking their opinions
and thus promoted them in honour or degraded them as he
pleased. It was mainly the poor and unimportant provinces
which had fallen to their share. Asia was the richest and
most important, but almost throughout the period there is some
scion of the imperial house with a general control over the
affairs of the East. There is an inscription in Cyprus which
proves that even when that island was under senatorial
government a proconsul was sent out "by the authority of
Caesar and a decree of the senate " to restore order. Finally
by the end of the reign the senate had become so feeble and
unreal that twenty of its members sitting in Caesar's house
were able to pass decrees which had the full validity of the
old sovereign council of Rome.
These considerations are enough to prove that Monarchy
is the only term which can properly describe the real nature of
the new government. Nevertheless, here as elsewhere in this
system of compromise and half-way houses, we must walk
warily between two fallacies. The senate is there and will
178
Gtrmufn
PLATE XXXVIII. SILVER PLATE FROM BOSCOREALE
AUGUSTUS
always be there. When Constantine made a new Rome he
made a new senate. As we study the subsequent progress of
the Empire we shall sometimes find the senate really supreme.
It chose Galba and Nerva. It dared to depose Maximin. It
really governed through Tacitus and Probus. It was its con-
stant aim to get its members declared immune from prosecution
and sometimes it succeeded ; but more often it served as a
whipping-stock when Caesar was in a bad temper. Only in
this sense is there any meaning in the term Dyarchy : if we take
the whole period of the principate from Augustus to Diocletian
there is some trace of equilibrium, faint though it be. And we
must not fall into the error of despising the letter of a constitu-
tion for the sake of its spirit. Though a king of England
never refuses a bill in practice, it nevertheless remains impor-
tant that he may. The letter is always there for reference, if
not for use, and the spirit is always liable to be brought up for
trial before it. The practice depends upon personal forces
which are transitory, the theory is always there awaiting its
opportunity.
THE PEOPLE AND THE MAGISTRATES
Nevertheless, if it is to the letter of the constitution that one
appeals, we must not forget the existence of a third element in
the constitution of Augustus — the People. As we have seen,
the plebiscite and the lex still passed formally through the
comitia. The plebiscite had of late republican years become
a weapon of opposition to the senate. Yet even under
Augustus we can point to a few measures passed in this form.
None were of much importance — one was merely the conferring
of the new title of "Father of his Country" upon Caesar.
Another concerned aqueducts. The judicial functions of the
populus were entirely abrogated by Augustus, and there only
remained that which, after all, had always been its most im-
portant function, the elections. Popular election in the comitia
was still under Augustus, the only path to the senate and the
magistracies. It is true that the magistracies had all paled
179
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
into insignificance before the new and mighty office of the
princeps. For this reason, perhaps, Augustus did not deprive
them of what they regarded not only as an ancient right, but
still more as a source of income. Here also there might have
been effective opposition. The populus might have returned
to office, and so to the senate, a series of champions of freedom.
But except Egnatius Rufus, there were no such champions.
The patron of the people, the man whose munificence fed them
and gave them the shows they lived for, was Caesar. No one
could bribe against his purse. He had, moreover, two direct
methods of securing the return of his nominees. In virtue of
his tribunician powers he had the right to draw up the list
of candidates, and in the second place it had always been the
practice for candidates to put forward the names of their
principal supporters. Augustus in his early days of strict
deference to constitutional etiquette used to go down to the
forum and personally canvass for his friends, afterwards, how-
ever, he reverted to the brusquer methods of Julius, aud merely
issued a fly-sheet to the electors bearing the names of his
nominees. Thus the elections became more and more a form,
and Tiberius transferred them to the senate without arousing
much opposition. In the whole period of Augustus we have
only one instance of his failure to pass a law which he desired
and then it was due to the organised opposition of the knights
who demanded its rejection publicly in the theatre.
The equestrian order still remained the stronghold of the
wealthy bourgeoisie. Owing to their wealth and their want of
political recognition, they had always been somewhat of a
danger to the republican constitution. It is typical of the
skilful statesmanship of Augustus that he saw this and provided
an honourable outlet for their ambitions as well as utilising
their services on behalf of the state. He had begun his period
of rule by putting a mere eques into the seat of the Ptolemies
as his prefect of Egypt. Subsequently the imperial legates and
procurators who administered the imperial provinces for him
were often chosen from this order. In finance he made great
1 80
FIG. I. GERMANICUS: CAMEO
FIG. 2. GEM OF AUGUSTUS
1'LATE XXXIX
AUGUSTUS
use of them, and along with a certain number of clever Greek
freedmen they filled the greater part of the new bureaucracy
which he gradually created. Maecenas himself, who was
probably at the head of the whole great system, and who acted
almost as prime minister to Augustus until he fell out of
favour, was content with equestrian rank. Social honours such
as rich men love were freely bestowed upon them. The young
princes of the imperial house rode at the head of the knights
with silver lances as "Princes of the Youth." Sometimes
Augustus treated the equestrian order as if it were a third limb
of the constitution on an equality with the senate and people.
Thus it was part of the system of Augustus to provide
careers for talent in every class. Even the slaves and freedmen
had immense opportunities in Caesar's bureaux. For the freed-
men in the country towns, where they were often the richest
inhabitants, he invented the special titular distinction of
"Augustals," their principal duty being to give dinners and
festivals in his honour, precisely the sort of duty to flatter their
pride without doing any harm.
As for the ancient magistracies of the Roman people, while
they were strictly preserved, they were utterly disarmed.
Consulships remain important only as leading to a subsequent
proconsulship over a province. The praetors still sat in their
courts of justice but really important cases came up to Caesar
on appeal. The tribunes were of no account beside their mighty
colleague. Magistracies were bestowed as marks of imperial
favour. Often there would be two or three successive consuls
in a single year. Caesar himself would sometimes deign to
take a consulship when he wished to honour a colleague or a
relative. Here again, however, the impotence of the magistracies
was very largely due to the intellectual bankruptcy of the
Roman nobility. They could not perform the simplest task
such as the charge of the corn-supply without bungling and
requiring the assistance of Caesar. But on one occasion when
a certain eedile organised a fire-brigade of his own and became
very zealous in extinguishing fires, he received a hint that his
181
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
zeal was unwelcome in the highest quarters. Thus the
magistracies declined little by little into mere decorations, or
became once more what they had been in the beginning, muni-
cipal officers for the city of Rome. But even there they were
superseded by the organising activity of the princeps. He
resuscitated the ancient office of city prefect and put him in
charge of the new police and the new fire-brigade while two
other new prefects commanded the praetorian guards. These
two officers soon began to overshadow the old magistracies.
ARMY AND TREASURY
Dio Cassius rightly asserts that the real power of Augustus
rested upon two things — the control of the army and of
the finances. We have already seen that in the so-called
abdications of Augustus there was no surrender of these
and no suggestion of their surrender. In view of the
present tendency among historians to attach real importance to
the restoration of the Republic in 27 B.C. and again in 23 B.C. it
is all the more important to remember that the twenty-three
legions which with their auxiliaries and reserves formed the
entire military force of the Roman Empire took their oath
solely to Augustus and were with one exception stationed
exclusively in his provinces, fought under his auspices and
took their orders from no other but Caesar and his legates.
Beyond these he had a praetorian corps of 9000 men in per-
manent cantonments within striking distance of Rome, as well
as a drilled bodyguard of slaves in his own house. In view of
these facts it is absurd to limit our conception of the power of
Caesar to a survey of the constitutional offices which he held.
It is only in the language of lawyers and pedants that his
authority rested upon consular and tribunician powers. Every-
body knew that a letter sealed with Caesar's sphinx was backed
by the swords of 140,000 legionaries. The military situation
of Augustus is therefore of the utmost importance.
Augustus was, as we have seen, a statesman and not a
soldier. The stories of his cowardice, repeated by Suetonius,
182
PLATE XL. AUGUSTUS AND FAMILY OF C^SARS
CAMEO
Manscll & Co.
AUGUSTUS
are confessedly drawn from the venomous letters of his enemy,
Antony. Augustus had emerged successfully through five civil
wars, had crossed tempestuous seas in small boats, had faced
mutinous armies and every sort of hardship. But all his
instincts were for peace and statecraft. We have seen that it
was the need of a standing army at Rome which led to the
need of permanent generals, and this to the downfall of the
old Roman constitution. When Caesar built his throne on the
ruins of the Republic the plain fact was that the general had
become monarch. Thus, in spite of the fact that Augustus
was not of a military character, and in spite of all his efforts to
prevent it, the monarchy of the Roman Empire was eventually
revealed as a military despotism. It was the irony of fate
that such a man as Augustus should have founded such a
monarchy.
But for the present the ugly fact that the army had bestowed
the purple was decently concealed. Augustus from the very
beginning of his power did his best to reduce the military
element in the state. During the civil wars, and indeed for
fifty years before they began, the troops had made and un-
made consuls, there had been constant mutinies and blackmail
in the army. Caesar's own first consulship had been obtained
in this way. A centurion had marched into the senate-house
and cried, "If you will not make him consul, this" — and he
tapped the hilt of his sword — " this shall." But now the older
discipline was revived. Agrippa in particular was a stern
disciplinarian of the old school. The soldiers were flattered
no longer. No more legionary coins were issued. For an
honour a legion was allowed to call itself Augusta, for a
punishment the title was revoked. The highest military
distinction, the triumph, was gradually reserved for the princeps
and the members of his house alone. Even when the title of
Imperator was earned by a victorious general it was trans-
ferred to him. But it was his aim to see that no private
citizen should have the opportunity of securing the high
military honours. Agrippa might have been dangerous and
183
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
accordingly he was brought into the family by marriage with
Caesar's daughter. But for the rest the conduct of important
operations was almost always confided to one of the young
princes — to Tiberius, or Drusus, or Germanicus. And they
were always victorious. When Quintilius Varus, a general
of humbler birth, was allowed to lead a great army he con-
veniently pointed the moral by a signal failure. No senatorial
governor might now levy troops or declare war on his own
account.
The only hand that the senate still had in military affairs
was that a "senatus consultum " was generally asked for a new
levy of troops. This was probably because it concerned the state
treasury, but partly also because it served to shift an unpleasant
responsibility off the shoulders of the princeps. It is not likely
that Augustus had forgone the right to levy.
It still remained the legal duty of every Roman citizen to
serve in the army. But since the days of Marius that duty had
become obsolete, no one wanted the city riff-raff in the legions.
Soldiering had become a profession, and there was never now
any general levy of the kind involved in modern conscription.
There must have been some compulsion upon the upper classes
to serve as officers, for Suetonius tells of a Roman knight who
was sold into slavery because he had chopped off his son's
thumbs in order to evade military service. There had been a
" City Legion " fighting at Actium, but the army was now
mainly recruited from Italy and the imperial provinces. Allied
princes like Herod the Great had their own militias, but were
also liable to be asked for contributions of trained auxiliaries
to the imperial army. From the provinces troops were demanded
in proportion to their warlike activity. The Dutch horsemen
were famous, and the Batavians supplied large contributions of
cavalry. The only people in the East who were enrolled in
the legions were the Galatians, who were, of course, Gauls by
ancestry. Augustus himself had a bodyguard of German
slaves. As a rule only freemen were enrolled in the legions,
but at the crisis of the great Pannonian and German revolts,
184
Anderson
FIG. I. STUCCO RELIEF : VICTORY
FIG. 2, DECORATIVE ORNAMENT,
"ARA PACIS"
TiwMlirtiiMiflMiWiliw**.
-*•""•• '- ' — f
|fl
. \
If
'.<</« '/dflMK i» iw wfltMn ww nw n TO 7» w 'i» TO At v V4< •:» •/« _ _.
; ••.»
FIG. 3. STUCCO RELIEF: BACCHIC FESTIVAL
PLATE XLI
..
Anderson
AUGUSTUS
the duty was laid upon rich citizens of equipping and maintain-
ing for six months a certain number of freedmen and slaves
who were promised their liberty and citizenship at the end of
six months. These would probably consist very largely of
gladiators. This fact is evidence of serious military weakness
in the Roman Empire. Although there were over four million
full Roman citizens, there were only about 140,000 men in the
ranks of the legions, and as there was a very long period of
service, twenty-five years and more, it follows that only a
small number of recruits would be wanted every year. It
seems a dangerously small army to hold such vast frontiers.
Augustus was successful in reducing the enormous rate of
pay which had prevailed during the civil wars. After the
death of Augustus the troops mutinied and demanded an
increase of their pay to a denarius (less than a franc) a day.
Augustus established a special military chest to provide
pensions for his veterans in place of the farms which they were
still accustomed to expect.
How greatly — how dangerously — Augustus had reduced
the size of the army may be seen from the fact that there were
at least fifty legions during the civil wars, and only twenty-five
at the death of Augustus. These troops were for the most
part stationed along the northern and eastern frontiers.
In Spain 3 legions
Lower Germany 4 „
Upper Germany 4 „
Pannonia 3 „
Dalmatia 2 „
Mcesia 2 „
Syria 3 „
Egypt 3 »
Africa I
To these must be added the 9000 men of the praetorian guard,
who enjoyed shorter service (sixteen years) and double pay.
The praetorians had to be genuine Italians, and when inside the
walls of Rome wore civilian dress. There were also three
185
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
" urban cohorts " as police — a new and most salutary invention
— and a "cohort of watchmen" for the prevention of fire.
Obviously with a service of twenty-five years there could be
no reserve. But some of the veterans of the praetorian guard
were used as paymasters or engineers. There were also colonies
of time-expired soldiers planted as garrisons in dangerous
country.
The legions themselves were stationed in great fortified
camps along the frontiers of their various provinces. There
were thus huge spaces of country totally without military forces.
For warfare on the shores of the Black Sea troops had to be
summoned from Syria. There was no such thing as a readily
mobilised striking force in Italy. This was an inconvenience
and a danger, but Augustus did not mean to organise a
military monarchy. Professor Gardthausen has a clever com-
parison of the problems before the Roman army with those
that face the British Empire. The problems were remarkably
similar, for greater speed of transport counteracts the greater
distances. Both peoples made great use of the system of
drilling native troops and expecting provinces to guard them-
selves. But the Romans would have been saved much trouble
if they had been able to adopt our system of a compact and
highly trained expeditionary force backed by a citizen army for
home defence. To be sure, the Romans now lived in a state
of peace far more profound than any that the world has en-
joyed before or since. Their wars were of their own making.
Within the circle of the armed frontiers Pax Romana reigned
supreme. The Roman citizens hung up their swords for
ever.
The creation of a standing fleet was not the least of Caesar's
achievements. The Mediterranean was now properly policed
and commerce was free to circulate. The Italian navy was
divided into two flotillas, one for the Western Mediterranean
and one for the Adriatic. Great artificial docks were con-
structed for them, one for the Mediterranean fleet at Misenum
by opening up a connection between the Avernian and Lucrine
1 86
AUGUSTUS
lakes and the sea and thus creating a small land-locked harbour
which was used for exercising the rowers in rough weather.
The construction of this Portus Julius, which was carried out
by Agrippa with a lofty disregard both of the gastronomic fame
of the Lucrine oysters and of the mythological celebrity of the
lake of Avernus as the gateway to the underworld, excited a
wonder which has been reflected both by Horace and Vergil.
Similarly a base for the Adriatic fleet was constructed by
great engineering works at Ravenna. A third harbour was
created on the coast of Gaul at Frejus (Forum Julii). The
Tiber was dredged and restored to navigation. Flotillas of
small vessels were maintained on the Rhine.
The navy, however, did not even in these days attain to
anything like the status of the army. It was " my fleet " — the
private property of the emperor, equipped and maintained out
of his own pocket, and manned chiefly by his slaves. Even
the "prefects of the fleet" were generally freedmen and
foreigners. A Roman admiral, as Mommsen remarks, ranked
below a procurator or a tax-collecter. Thus the Romans never
to the end of their days realised the meaning or importance of
sea-power. Their navy was only for police work and on several
occasions, as for example in the Dalmatian War, they failed to
perceive that naval operations might have been of the greatest
assistance to their army. It is true that there were no hostile
navies in the world, but the empire was so distributed that
marine communication might have been of very great value.
The control of finance was a necessary corollary to the control
of the troops. The Republic had been shipwrecked on finance
almost as much as on the military system, and there is some
truth in Mommsen's epigram: "the Romans had bartered
their liberty for the corn-ships of Egypt." Perhaps the most
sinister light in which we can regard the statesmanship of
Augustus is that suggested by Tacitus. He was buying the
support of all classes in the state systematically. But to that
the Republic had already accustomed them.
We must clear our minds of the modern idea of a budget
187
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
and a coherent public system of finance. The Romans had
never paid taxes and their financial administration had rested
in the hands of young men just beginning their public career as
quzestors. This was because finance was a comparatively recent
idea at Rome. It was not part of the mos maiorum at Rome
to have a financial policy, and Rome had always been a military
and not a commercial state. Even now it was a cheap empire.
If we except the corn-supply, the pay of the army was the only
large head of expenditure. On the whole, one with another,
the provinces were more than self-supporting, and as time went
on a prudent policy of development made them extremely
profitable. As we shall see later, the encouragement of natural
resources and the exploitation of minerals all over the Empire
added enormously to the Roman wealth. Officials and magis-
trates had generally been expected not only to give their
services for nothing but even to pay for their honours hand-
somely with public works and entertainments. Public works
undertaken by the state were generally carried out by slaves
or soldiers. When marble was needed it was usually requisi-
tioned from Greece or Numidia. But it was inevitable that
the man who controlled the army should also possess the
revenues. Julius Caesar had simply appropriated the treasury.
Augustus as usual reached the same end by a more devious
path.
The enormous treasures which he disbursed were his
favourite weapons of statecraft. If he had a friend to get into
the senate he would simply make him a present of the necessary
income. To retain the goodwill of the commons he scattered
those immense largesses which he has recorded on the Ancyran
monument. To the Roman plebs he distributed over six
millions sterling in eight donations. On another occasion of
financial stress he lent more than half a million without interest.
When the soldiers had to be rewarded after Actium he was able
to save himself from the unpopular necessity of confiscation by
finding six millions in cash to buy them land. There was
scarcely a town in the empire which had not some splendid
[88
)8
FIG. I. FRAGMENT OF AUGUSTAN AI.TAR
FIG. 2. ROMAN RELIEF
PLATE XLII
AUGUSTUS
building to bear witness of its debt to Caesar's generosity, and
we shall see how he transformed the whole aspect of the
metropolis. In addition to all this he often replenished the
state treasury out of his own pocket. Over a million and a
half was thus transferred. No wonder that a man who could
thus pour his gold into the treasury should come to regard it
as his own.
To the Roman mind it was unbecoming to a free gentleman
to be asked to pay taxes in a free country. They held that
a tributum was only for slaves to pay. Moreover it was one
of the limitations of the power of Augustus that he had no
constitutional right to impose taxation on Italy. Twice indeed
he proposed to inflict a property-tax on Roman citizens. In
A.D. 4 and 13 he took a census of all properties above ^"2000
as a preliminary measure, but on the second occasion at least
it is explained by the historian as a shrewd stroke of diplomacy
to make people acquiesce in the existing death-duties. The
serious financial embarrassment of these years was caused by
the expense of the gratuities paid to time-expired soldiers. The
soldier's daily pay of about sixpence was only pocket-money,
he had always expected a farm on his discharge. Under
Augustus this allowance of land was commuted for a bounty
of about ^125 for the legionary, or ^185 for the praetorian
guard. Of course, with a service of over twenty years and
constant fighting, the number of veterans discharged each year
must have fallen considerably below the 20,000 recruits en-
rolled, but still it was a heavy expense. In some cases the
veterans were retained under the colours and in some cases
land in new countries was still given. But this burden led to
the establishment of a new military chest in A.D. 6. This was
filled in the first instance by a donation of nearly two
millions from Augustus and Tiberius, but it was maintained by
two indirect taxes which fell upon the Roman citizens — very
much to their annoyance. One was a tax of one per cent, on
all objects bought and sold, the other a five per cent, tax on
legacies. The latter was not imposed purely for revenue. It
189
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
was intended, along with other laws, to discourage celibacy,
since it only fell upon those who died without heirs of kin.
What appears to be a distinct tax is another upon the sale of
slaves.
The other large head of expenditure was that of the Roman
corn-supply. Two hundred thousand people received free corn
and the rest of the citizens always expected to buy it very cheaply.
Most of this corn came from Egypt and Sicily as taxation paid
in kind. The control of the supply was in the hands of a new
department, 'euro, annonce, but owing to its mismanagement
there were several periods of famine, on which occasions either
Augustus himself or some member of his family had to step in
and put things straight.
The general expenses of administering the Empire were
not as great as modern analogies would lead us to suppose.
No doubt the imperial legates and procurators received wages
out of the imperial fiscus. It is commonly stated that all
provincial magistrates now received a fixed salary instead of
being left to plunder the provincials. The truth is that the
higher magistrates of Rome never had received and did not
for a long time yet receive a salary. But they had always
claimed an allowance for their travelling expenses technically
called " mule and tent money," and this had been fixed on a
generous scale which really amounted in practice to a salary.
The only change was that instead of allowing these fees to
be subject to contract on the regular contract system of the
republican treasury, the governors now received a fixed grant
calculated according to the necessary scale of expenses in the
various provinces. For the provinces an immense saving was
effected in this manner but it must have been more expensive
to the central treasury.
The finances of the provinces were gradually brought into
order and arranged with consummate skill. The little informa-
tion that we possess tends to show that nowhere was the
Augustan reformation more beneficent or more brilliantly
successful. In Gaul the land-tax and property-tax were fixed
190
PLATE XLIII. ALTAR OF AMEMPTUS
AUGUSTUS
in 26 on a fairly high scale, it is true, but the development of
commerce and agriculture fostered by the Romans made their
incidence a light burden in comparison with the rapidly in-
creasing wealth of the province. By this time the state had
accepted the theory of tribute which the Roman lawyers had
developed upon false principles. Tribute was now regarded,
not as a commutation of the liability to military service, which
was its real origin, but as a rent paid to Rome for the continued
enjoyment of lands which had passed to her by right of con-
quest. The tribute was everywhere reassessed upon a new
valuation systematically conducted. Generally it represented
a tithe of the corn harvest and 20 per cent.'of liquid products,
such as oil and wine. In the senatorial provinces the old
system of tax-farming by contractors survived for a time, but
in his own provinces Augustus instituted an imperial board of
revenue administered by Roman knights or Greek slaves and
freedmen as his fiscal procurators. We have, indeed, three
known cases of embezzlement by native agents. One, Eros,
had advertised his insolent rapacity in Egypt by purchasing a
celebrated fighting quail for an immense sum of money, and
then cooking it for his dinner. Another, Licinius, a native
Gaul set to collect taxes in his own country, disarmed Caesar's
wrath like the servant in the parable by showing rooms full of
silver and gold, which he professed to have stored up in his
master's interest. In this case it is zealous extortion which is
charged against him. One of his methods was to extort
fourteen months' taxes in the year by pointing out to the inno-
cent natives that since December was by its very name the
tenth month, they had two more monthly contributions to pay
before the end of the year. A paymaster, also a slave, who
died inTiberius's reign, was notorious for the retinue of fourteen
persons who attended him on his travels. He had his private
cooks and physicians. But these are isolated cases. On the
whole it is clear that the provinces were rejoicing at their
deliverance from the oppression of the Republic. They were
always anxious to be transferred from the senate to Csesar. If
191
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
the tax-gatherer was still at their door, he was now a man under
independent authority with a master who would listen to petitions
and appeals. Moreover, they now had a government which
assisted them to pay by intelligently developing their resources.
The public treasury of the senate was no longer entrusted
to mere quaestors. Augustus at first instituted prefects for
this also. But the dearth of administrative capacity at Rome
compelled him to transfer the charge to the praetors. How-
ever, he kept an eye upon its administration himself, as is shown
by the fact that when he died he left to the state an account of
the condition of the treasury.
It is still too early to speak of a definite system of division
between the public "aerarium" and the emperor's private
"fiscus." But the budget of the senate would include:
REVENUE
5% legacy duty.
2% or 4% duty on sale of slaves.
i% on merchandise.
Customs and harbour dues.
Confiscations from state offenders.
Intestate estates.
Public lands.
Provincial tribute.
State mines and works.
Mintage of copper.
The budget of the fiscus would include :
EXPENDITURE
Army and police.
Religion.
Corn-supply.
Water-supply.
Fire brigade.
Administration.
REVENUE
Tribute of Caesar's provinces,
especially Egypt and Gaul.
Legacies (,£15,000,000 in the last
twenty years).
Private domains.
Family inheritance.
Aurum coronarium (a complimen-
tary gift on accession).
Private mines and works.
Mintage of silver and gold.
EXPENDITURE
Provincial adminis-
tration and
salaries.
Largess and bounties.
Temples and public
buildings.
Loans and gifts.
The fleets.
Games and shows.
192
RG. I. THE TEMPLE OF SATURN, FORUM, ROME
FIG. 2. THE TF.Ml'I.K OK MATER MATUTA, ROME
PLATE XLIV
AUGUSTUS
THE PROVINCES
Turning now to a rapid survey of the Roman world from a
geographical point of view we shall see the work of restoration
and repair, proceeding with the same methodical thoroughness
which makes this regime one of the most beneficent in the
history of civilisation. We have already seen something of
the provincial system as it was reorganised in 27 B.C. The
provinces which fell to the share of the senate were these :
Asia.
Africa.
Gallia Narbonensis (transferred to the senate in 22 B.C.)
Hispania Bcztica.
Crete with the Cyrenaica.
Macedonia with Achaia.
Bithynia with Pontus.
Cyprus (also transferred to the senate in 22 B.C.).
Dalmatia (until the revolt of 1 1 B.C.).
Sardinia with Corsica.
Sicily.
These were governed by annual magistrates, chosen by lot
from a list selected by the senate — the first two by proconsuls
of consular rank, the others also by governors termed pro-
consuls but actually only of praetorian rank, that is, ex-praetors.
Africa was the only one of these provinces which contained
troops and the senatorial governors went out in civilian dress
as administrators only. Caesar's provinces were :
Spain.
Gaul.
Syria with Cilicia and, until 22 B.C., Cyprus.
To these were gradually added :
Germania.
Illyricum, including Dalmatia and Pannonia.
Galatia, including Lycaonia, Pamphylia, Pisidia, and part
of Cilicia, with Paphlagonia added in 5 B.C.
These were all governed by le-jates of Caesar, commonly
N 193
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
chosen from the ranks of the senate, with the title of pro-
praetor. They held office for as long as Caesar desired, and
were provided with a staff, chosen by him, of trained financiers.
In addition to these, other districts under prefects were gradually
accumulated :
Egypt.
Mcesia and Triballia.
Alpes Cottice.
Alpes Maritimce.
And others again under procurators :
Judtea (after A.D. 6).
Rhcetia.
Noricum.
Further, there were a large number of "allied" or "client"
kingdoms and republics :
Thrace. Abitene.
Pontus with Bosphorus. Emesa.
Judaea (till A.D. 6). Galilaea and Peraea.
Commagene. Nabataea.
Cappadocia. Batanaea.
Armenia. Mauretania.
Arabia.
And the allied states :
Lycia.
Athens, Sparta, Rhodes, and other
Greek cities.
In his own provinces Caesar was supreme in all things ; he had
the right of making peace, war, and alliance, without consult-
ing the senate. Though he governed through legates or pro-
curators, the Roman law had always granted a right of appeal
from a lower magistrate to his superior. This was the source
of Paul's "appeal unto Caesar" from the procurator of Judaea.
In the senatorial provinces his imperium, which had been
specially defined as "superior" (mams), gave him precedence
when he was actually present. And we have many cases of his
194
AUGUSTUS
interference in senatorial provinces. Caesar's legates, such as
Agrippa, Tiberius, and Gaius, constantly act as overlords in
Asia, though a decree of the senate is required for this. We
hear of Augustus founding colonies in Sicily. Moreover, the
princeps had sole authority over the army, and for any military
operations it would be necessary to borrow troops of him.
The foundations of this great empire were not hastily or
carelessly laid. Although of feeble constitution and by nature
a man of peace, Augustus spent the first half of his long reign
more abroad than at home, in fighting rebels and organising
or reforming with unwearied energy. To this part of his
work we are unable to devote sufficient attention through lack
of material. The ancient historians prefer to record small
victories over barbarian tribes, or the petty gossip of the
Roman streets, while they have little to say about the tireless
administration which in one generation transformed the Roman
world from a horrible chaos into that scene of peace and
prosperity shown to us in the pages of Strabo and Pliny. So
while our eyes are fixed upon the sins and follies of Roman
emperors and courtiers, until we get an impression of rotten
tyranny conducted according to the caprice of monsters and
fools, all the time the greater part of Europe was advancing in
peace to a state of general culture and civilisation such as it
had never known before, and such as it never knew again until
the nineteenth century. A casual glance over the inscriptions
of a provincial town probably gives us a truer impression than
all the rhetoric of the historians. In Pompeii, for example, a
small and unimportant suburb of Naples which scarcely comes
into the view of history, we see a busy and useful municipal
life carried on in absolute security. There were the ten
councillors (decuriones), who corresponded to the Roman
senate, and there were two local consuls bearing the title
of "duumviri." In most cases a small municipality would
have its "patronus" also, a local squire, perhaps, who in
some measure corresponded to the princeps, and who would
represent the interests of the town at Rome, or with the Roman
195
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
praetor. His main business, however, was to equip his town
with baths, temples, and colonnades, or to provide it with
public banquets. For the rich freedmen, in whose hands was
much of the trade of the place, Augustus had provided the new
office of Seviri Aiigustales, which we have already described.
There were no rates, for private munificence took their place.
There was no direct taxation in Italy, and the indirect taxes
were inconsiderable. Internal trade was free. The obligation
to military service was so widely distributed that it fell very
lightly on Italy, and the natives accordingly became less and
less warlike. All the Italian peoples were now Roman citizens.
Trade was greatly assisted by the improvement of communica-
tions which took place during this period. The care of roads
properly devolved upon the senate, but as they showed their
usual incompetence in this department the princeps had to step
in and organise a special Board of Roads with a curator for
each of the trunk lines of communication. Augustus also
established an imperial post with a system of stages and relays,
which lasted on until the coming of railways. The vehicles
and horses were maintained by the roadside communities, and
imperial messengers who carried a diploma or passport were
allowed to travel express by this means. The great road to
Rimini, the Flaminian Way, was the first to be repaired, and
Augustus adorned its terminal city with a handsome marble
bridge* and triumphal arch, possibly as a compensation for the
trouble which he himself had inflicted upon the town during
the civil wars. Flourishing historic cities like Turin and
Brescia owe their origin to colonies founded by Augustus.
Towns like Perugia which had been almost destroyed in the
civil wars now grew up again and flourished. In all, Augustus
founded twenty-eight colonies in Italy, and supplied 90,000
veterans of the civil wars with land which he had bought and
paid for. That the sea was now safe for trade and fishery
must have meant a great deal to the coast towns. Augustus
himself wrote an account of the condition of Italy, arid Pliny
* Plate 28, Fig. i.
196
Brogi
Pi.ATK XLV. PORCH AND INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON, ROME
AUGUSTUS
confesses to using it as his authority. In all the long and
important history of Italy it is doubtful whether she has ever
enjoyed such peace and prosperity as began for her in the
reign of Augustus.
A broad view of foreign politics showed Augustus two
vital points of danger — the North and East. To the
north the fierce and warlike barbarians of Germany had been
checked indeed by Julius, but also exasperated. Tribes
more or less akin to them extended southwards across the
Danube and even to the Austrian Tyrol, where they were little
more than a week's march from the gates of Rome. A strong
frontier policy was needed here. In the East there were the
Parthians, the only possible rival power to Rome. The Romans
at Carrhae noticed that while the chiefs wore their hair parted
and curled and their faces painted in the Persian fashion, the
warriors had the unkempt locks of barbarian Thrace. It is
likely enough that these Parthian bowmen had come in round
the shores of the Black Sea from Thrace or South Russia.
They had all the characteristics of northern nomads, but their
kings had a good deal of Hellenic culture. They could boast
of a choice collection of Roman eagles captured not only from
Crassus at Carrhae, but from two armies sent against them by
Antony. Thousands of Roman prisoners were still working
as slaves on the banks of the Euphrates. The task of punish-
ing them had been definitely laid upon Augustus as a legacy
from Julius, who had been slain at the moment when he was
about to undertake it himself. Moreover, the Romans felt the
loss of those standards very acutely, and not the least motive
for their acquiescence in monarchy had been the hope that a
monarch would retrieve their honour in this quarter. The
earlier poems of Horace constantly express hopes of vengeance.
The manner in which Augustus satisfied these ardent
aspirations of national pride is characteristic of him. Instead
of the armies and bloody battles which historians demand of
their favourites, Augustus achieved his object by luck and
strategy. When he was organising the affairs of the East in
197
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
29 B.C., after the conquest of Egypt, he had left the Parthian
question unsolved. For this, Mommsen takes him to task, but
there is little doubt that it would have been folly to undertake
a great and perilous war at that moment while the affairs of
Rome were still in disorder. Moreover the attitude of the
army compelled him to return home. Instead of fighting, he
was content to set up rival powers on the Parthian frontier.
The Parthians hated their king Phraates and there was a de-
posed rival in the field, Tiridates, to whom Augustus now gave
shelter in the province of Syria, hoping, as indeed happened,
that his presence in the neighbourhood would keep Phraates
civil. At the same time Augustus set up a buffer kingdom of
Lesser Armenia on the Parthian border and in the south
strengthened and reinstated Herod the Great. Four or five
legions were left to guard Syria.
In 23 B.C. it chanced that Tiridates had managed to kidnap
the child of Phraates and was keeping him in custody in the
Roman province. It is significant of the changed relations
between Parthia and Rome that, instead of marching into Syria
to recover the child, Phraates sent an embassy to Rome, whither
also Tiridates came in person. Of course the senate made the
restoration of the child conditional upon the return of the
standards and prisoners. Phraates consented, but there was
some delay in carrying out the contract and this may have
been secretly arranged to enable Augustus to conduct the affair
in a more striking fashion. Augustus marched out with an
army and at his mere approach the standards and captives were
given up with due formalities. It was really a Roman triumph,
almost as great as if it had been attained by bloodshed, for all
the world could see the humiliation of Parthia. Augustus, that
astute tactician, took care that the event should not be allowed
to lose its impressiveness for the mere lack of bloodshed. The
return of the standards was treated as a Roman triumph. They
were placed with every solemnity in the temple of Mars the
Avenger. Coins were struck representing the suppliant
Parthian on his knees and the same scene is depicted in relief
198
tn
W
t/5
a:
U
X
AUGUSTUS
on the centre of Caesar's breastplate on the famous statue. The
poets broke out into dutiful paeans.
unc petit Armenius pacem, nunc porrigit
Parthus eques timida captaque signa mi
cries Ovid. Vergil, after his manner, speaks of the Euphrates
flowing more quietly in future. The odes of Horace and the
elegies of Propertius contain similar loyal allu-
sions. Ferrero, who regards Augustus as a
feeble trickster just as he regards Julius as a
shabby adventurer, has nothing but contempt
for this episode. But seeing that the Parthians
were now utterly weakened by their internal feuds
and quite submissive to Rome it would have theltandards
been folly to embark upon their conquest. That
they gave much trouble in the future is true enough, but that
might fairly be left for the future to deal with. Extermination
might have quieted them for ever, but Augustus had really no
excuse for making war upon them.
On the same visit to the East a still more elaborate system
of buffer states forming a double semicircle round Parthia was
organised. Armenia yielded to Rome and received at the hands
of Tiberius a new king who had been educated at Rome.
Augustus himself explains that although he might have made
Armenia into a Roman province he preferred to follow the
example of "our ancestors" and give the crown to a native
king. Augustus never pretended to be a world-conqueror.
Similarly Media Atropatene received a new king of Roman
education, so did Commagene and Emesa. These formed the
outer ring of buffer states.
The central state behind them was Galatia, an arid highland
district inhabited by the descendants of those Gauls who had
burst into the Greek world under Brennus. Though they
had acquired some tincture of Greek civilisation and had a
capital of some importance at Ancyra, they still spoke the
199
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Gaulish language and were still a warlike race. For these
reasons, on the death of their king, Augustus preferred to
turn their country into a province. To the north was the very
friendly kingdom of Polemo in Pontus, and to the south other
friendly princedoms as well as the Roman provinces of Cilicia,
Syria, and Cyprus.
For all this elaborate bulwark, the Parthian question was
not really settled. They continued to exercise an undue
influence in Armenia, and in A.D. i there was another solemn
mission to the East and a conference between Phraates the
Parthian king and Gaius the grandson of Augustus. Once
more the Parthian professed submission, and once more the
court poets struck their obsequious lyres. When Phraates
died, his uncle Orodes who succeeded ruled with such cruelty
that he was assassinated. Thereupon the Parthians sent to
Rome for a king and Augustus gave them a nephew of the
murdered tyrant, a youth also of Roman education. We note
this proceeding as common in the foreign policy of Augustus.
He must have had something like a school for young barbarian
princes at Rome, but whether the lessons that they learnt in
Roman society were altogether salutary is doubtful.
Behind this wall the great provinces of Asia, Syria, and
Bithynia were wrapped in profound security. Here Greek
culture continued to flourish with periodical incursions of
oriental religion and philosophy. In every considerable town
the Jews formed a great and growing section of the population
but even they were half Greek in their ways of life. The
country was rich and lazy and utterly unwarlike. Civilisation
had risen to a high pitch and it was probably this part of the
world which sent to Rome those artists who contributed to the
revival of sculpture. Pretty little epigrams in Greek elegiacs
seem to have been their principal literary accomplishment.
These provinces have very little history — happily for them —
at this period. We know them best from the Acts of the
Apostles, where we get a glimpse of their superstitions, their
eagerness to embrace new religions. We see the fanaticism of
200
PLATE XLVII. THEATRE OF MARCELLUS, ROME
AUGUSTUS
Ephesus with its magnificent temple of Diana and stately
worship, a religion of oriental character overlaid with Greek
culture, and only rivalled in its attractions by the Roman
amphitheatre. For these people as for the rest of the world
Augustus had his policy. Since worship was their instructive
need and Euhemerism had accustomed them to worship men,
he set up an elaborate cult of himself, or rather, by a subtle
distinction without a difference, a cult of "the genius of
Augustus." Temples were built to "Rome and Augustus"
and an elaborate hierarchy of "High Priests," "Asiarchs," and
" Bithyniarchs," which became the highest social distinctions
in the society of the day. This was his method of securing
the allegiance of nations devoted to religion and flattery.
Here in the near future was to be the field of that momentous
conflict between this State religion and Christianity, with other
oriental faiths, such as Mithraism, also claiming their proselytes.
As for old Greece, the Romans never denied their spiritual
debt to her, and accordingly they regarded Greece with some-
thing of the veneration which a man feels for his university.
Augustus himself had been educated at Apollonia, he sent his
heirs to various Greek cities for their education. It would
have seemed sacrilege to educated Romans to put a legate in
charge of Athens. Hence we find Greece enjoying quite an
exceptional position in the empire, indeed without exception
the freest and most favoured part of it. Towns such as Athens,
Lacedsemon, Thespiae, Tanagra, Platsea, Delphi, and Olympia
were free and almost sovereign. Athens continued to coin her
silver drachms with the old design of Pallas and the owl,
elected her own archons and generals, held assemblies and even
had a sort of empire extending over all Attica, part of Boeotia
and five islands of the Cyclades. One Julius Nicanor, her
"new Themistocles," purchased the island of Salamis and
presented it to his city in the civilised manner of empire-build-
ing. Sparta, too, though now shrunken to the size of a village,
bore rule over Northern Laconia, while in the south there was a
free confederacy to keep her in order. Beside these cities of
201
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
ancient renown stood the new and splendid creation of Augustus
— Nicopolis, the city of victory, founded on the promontory of
Actium in commemoration of the great victory of 3 1 . Nicopolis
had its great athletic festival like Olympia and ruled over a
considerable territory. In addition to these free cities there
were some Roman colonies. Corinth rose again from her ashes
as an important commercial city founded by Julius Caesar.
Patras, on the Corinthian Gulf, a new foundation of Augustus,
became one of the most important cities of Greece, as it is to-
day. The rest of Southern Greece, consisting mainly of obscure
villages, formed the new senatorial province of Achaia and was
governed by a proconsul at Corinth. It was a poor unmilitary
province. The northern part formed the senatorial province of
Macedonia. Thessalonica and Apollonia were the principal
centres of government and civilisation in this region. In
Greece, as elsewhere, Augustus made it his aim to focus a
national unity upon religion. The old Achaean league was
revived as a religious gathering with Argos for its centre, and
the Delphic Amphictyony, the oldest surviving institution in
Europe, became the basis of a Panhellenic confederacy which
met annually for religious purposes under Roman patronage, a
sort of Eisteddfod combining religion with culture. It sacri-
ficed to Caesar, and here, too, we find a president called
" Helladarch." But although Greece had liberty and peace,
something was amiss with her. Her shrunken population con-
tinued to decline. In Strabo's Geography, Thebes is a mere
village.
Crossing the water we find that the newly conquered king-
dom of Egypt was the key to the whole position of Augustus.
It was the wealth of Egypt which had reconciled Rome to
monarchy and it was by means of that wealth that he continued
to hold the allegiance of his subjects. Like Greece it had an
ancient civilisation which impressed the Romans as something
beyond their comprehension. Alexandria, in particular, as the
gateway to the wealth of Egypt, and as the greatest existing
centre of Greek culture, not to mention its huge population
202
AUGUSTUS
and commercial advantages, seemed to the Romans a really
dangerous rival. The fear of that rivalry had been felt very
acutely at Rome when news came of the ambitious schemes of
Cleopatra and the subservience of Antony. Augustus was
really heading something like a national crusade when he
declared war upon them. The same fears now actuated him
in settling the treatment of Egypt as a province. Though he
writes " I added Egypt to the Roman empire," he treated it
rather as an imperial domain under a prefect or viceroy closely
attached to his interests. Its first prefect was Cornelius
Gallus, a knight from the Gallic colony of Frejus, a poet him-
self and a friend of Vergil. Cornelius Gallus was in fact the
hero of the famous eclogue : neget quis carmina Gallo ? It was
specially ordained that no senator might visit Egypt without
the express permission of Caesar. The native Egyptians were
already overridden by a Greek aristocracy dating from
Alexander's conquest. They had no rights, and no nationality
was designed for them as it had been elsewhere. Augustus
accepted the elaborate bureaucratic system which he had found
in existence when he came. The Greek aristocracy lived
almost exclusively in Alexandria, possessing a municipal con-
stitution, magistracy, and priesthood ofltheir own. The ecclesia
was stopped but otherwise there was no attempt to Romanise
Egypt. The old Egyptian worship of Isis and Osiris had
conquered all its conquerors and continued to make inroads
even into Rome itself where Augustus was forced to accept it
as irresistible. All that had happened in Egypt was that
Augustus had taken the place of the Ptolemies in the official
religion. It was the motive of fear which led to the appoint-
ment of a mere knight as viceroy, though he had three legions
under his command. The officials under him were knights or
freedmen. The taxes remained very heavy, as was necessary,
but now the Egyptians were placed in a better position to pay
them. Even before the civil war was quite ended in 29 B.C.
Augustus had employed his soldiers to clear the canals and
raise the level of the dams which ensure the Egyptian harvests.
203
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
This process continued, and Egypt never had such prosperity
again until Lord Cromer came to resume the work of Augustus.
The harvest depended simply on the height to which the Nile
rose. The ancient Nilometer at Elephantine records that the
Nile rose to an unprecedented height in the latter days of
Augustus. Formerly a level of eight ells had meant famine,
now it ensured a tolerable harvest. Another inscription found
at Coptos gives us the names of the Roman soldiers who built
reservoirs of water along the great roads. Then the trade
with India along the Red Sea first began to grow great.
Whereas in the time of Cleopatra hardly twenty ships sailed
to India in a year, there was already in Strabo's day (about
A.D. 1 8) a great fleet of Indiamen. Taxes on exports and
imports returned a huge revenue to the imperial purse.
The prefect who represented his master on the throne of
the Ptolemies was in a difficult position. To Rome he was a
mere servant, to the Egyptians something like a god. Against
these flattering influences Gallus the poet had not strength to
resist. He allowed statues to be erected to him and even had
his own achievements engraved upon the pyramids. A
traitorous friend reported these indiscretions at Rome.
Augustus was content to recall him and forbid him to live in
the provinces or to enter his presence. But the officious senate
voted his condemnation to banishment, and confiscated all his
property to Augustus, whereby Gallus was driven to suicide.
Then Augustus was sorry and complained that it was hard not
to be able to scold one's friends like a private man. This was
the first case of that disease known as delatio (informing) which
was afterwards to become such a pest under the Empire. It is
satisfactory to learn that the informer was very rudely treated
in Roman society. From Egypt, as a base, expeditions were
made in the time of Augustus to Arabia and the Soudan.
Arabia Felix was to the Romans a kind of Eldorado of bound-
less wealth, as Horace writes to a friend who was joining the
campaign. The Arabs brought their incense into the Syrian
markets and already traded with India from Aden, but the
204
FIG. I. COLONNADE OF OCTAVIA
FIG. 2. ROMAN BAS-RELIEF
PLATE XUX
AUGUSTUS
national wealth of the country was exaggerated and its diffi-
culties unknown. This expedition of 25 B.C., which was on a
very large scale and included contingents from Judaea, was one
of the few deliberate wars of conquest ever planned by Augustus.
He learnt a lesson by its failure in the burning and trackless
deserts. The other campaign against the black ^Ethiopians
of the Soudan under their warlike but one-eyed queen Candace
was more successful. Petronius the legate penetrated as far as
the Second Cataract and sent a thousand prisoners to Rome,
but Augustus seems to have been content to make the First
Cataract his southern frontier.
The neighbouring client kingdom of Judaea is of importance
not only because the days of Augustus saw the birth of that
Child in Bethlehem who was destined to conquer Rome and
through Rome the world, but because its throne was occupied
by the ablest and most remarkable man, next to Augustus, in
the whole Empire. Herod the Great, an Edomite Arab by birth,
had succeeded to the throne of the Maccabees in 37 B.C. He
was not only a daring warrior but a singularly skilful diplomat
who was always able to cover up his crimes by adroit flattery
and a fascinating manner. He was very successful in trimming
between the rivals throughout the civil wars and even shared
the favours of Cleopatra with his Roman masters. In these
ways he increased his domains by the addition of Gadara,
Samaria, and the Philistine coast towns. In compliment to
Augustus he refounded Samaria with great splendour as the
Greek city of Sebaste and built Greek theatres, Roman amphi-
theatres, and baths in Jerusalem itself. He even instituted
quinquennial games there, wherein naked athletes performed
to the infinite disgust of the Jews. He took his sons to Rome
for their education and there he met and fascinated both
Augustus and Agrippa. He even persuaded Agrippa to visit
Jerusalem for the opening of his magnificent new temple in 1 5
B.C. Agrippa came and sacrificed a whole hecatomb to Jehovah
to the apparent delight of the people. Later on Herod made a
grand tour of Asia Minor, scattering lavish gifts everywhere
205
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
and receiving complimentary inscriptions in return. He
succeeded in obtaining valuable privileges for his fellow- Jews
scattered abroad in those regions. Henceforth they were not
forced to render military service and had special permission to
keep the Sabbath.
In 9 and 8 B.C., however, he got into trouble with Augustus
for conducting a military expedition against the Arabs without
permission. This was the greatest offence that a client king
could commit, and Augustus declared that henceforth he would
treat Herod not as a friend, but as a subject. But in the next
year a humble embassy was sent to Rome with the historian
Nicolaus as its spokesman. Herod received the gracious per-
mission to deal with his rebellious sons as he thought fit, and
accordingly strangled two of them. Herod's family history is
a deplorable record of crimes and intrigues. He seems to have
had ten wives, and on his death in 4 B.C., he left three wills
among which Augustus had to decide. Seeing that Judaea was
so rich and powerful as to be a possible source of danger, he
decided to split it up into three. Then began a whole series
of troubles, in the course of which the Jews of Jerusalem actually
attacked a Roman legion. In revenge the legate of Syria,
Quintilius Varus, crucified 2000 of the inhabitants. In the final
award Judaea fell to Archelaus, Galilee to Herod Antipas.
Ten years later, however, the infamous Archelaus was deposed
at the petition of his subjects, and Judaea was made subject to
the province of Syria with a procurator of its own. Herod
Antipas continued to rule his petty kingdom until about A.D.
34, when it also was united to the province. He is the Herod
whom Christ denounced as " that fox," and he is the Herod of
Christ's Judgment, when he happened to be at Jerusalem on a
visit to Pontius Pilatus, the Roman procurator. Pilate was a
Roman knight, but Felix, one of his successors, was only
a freedman. The seat of the Roman government was not at
Jerusalem, but at Caesarea, so that the prcztorium in which the
trial of Jesus took place must have been the temporary head-
quarters of Pilate in the palace built by Herod the Great.
206
6 A
!M,\TF, L. COIN I'LATK II
AUGUSTUS
The procurator only commanded auxiliary troops, and nearly
all the " Roman soldiers " mentioned in the Gospels must have
been of Jewish birth. As soon as it was a province, but not
before, Judaea had to pay tribute to Caesar. Hence the
existence of a " chief of the publicans " like Zacchseus. As
usual, the Romans preserved what they could of native institu-
tions, and the Sanhedrin continued to act as a national council,
so far as could be permitted. Thus it might try Jesus, but it
could not pronounce the death sentence. On the other hand,
another procurator, Festus, committed Paul to the Sanhedrin
for judgment. The fact is that the Jewish law was so peculiarly
national that a bewildered and well-intentioned Roman knight
like Pilate might often say " take ye Him and judge Him ac-
cording to your law." The Roman government was so tolerant
of the religion of its subjects that even a Roman citizen who
ventured to enter the Holy of Holies was punished with death.
The Jewish religion was expressly under Roman protection.
Agrippa, as we have seen, had sacrificed to Jehovah, but later
on we find Augustus commending his grandson Gaius for not
having worshipped Jehovah. As a matter of fact, with the
spread of the newer forms of Hellenic philosophy the religious
feeling of the world, which had long ago given up its faith in
the Olympian mythology, was turning more and more towards
monotheism and a mystical system of ethics. The higher
Pharisaism, which Paul had learnt at the feet of Gamaliel, was
decidedly influenced by Stoicism. Hence the Jewish religion
even before its Christian development was extremely fascinating
to the Roman mind, and it had to be forbidden in the capital.
Even at Jerusalem the Jews were expected to sacrifice, not to
but far " Caesar and the Roman People " every day. Augustus
paid for this ritual out of his own pocket. In deference to
the feeling of the Jews, the coins struck for Judaea bore no
portrait of Caesar, and even the standards, because they bore
portraits, were ordered not to be carried into the Holy
City. It is true that the silver denarius of Syria circulated
in Judaea to some extent, and it is of such a coin that Christ
207
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
was speaking when He asked : " Whose image and superscrip-
tion is this ? "
The province of Africa with Numidia was handed over to
the senate as peaceful in 27 B.C., and it was one of the only two
Roman provinces which Augustus never visited. Nominally
it stretched from the boundary of the kingdom of Mauretania
at the river Ampsaga on the west to the borders of the
Cyrenaica on the east. But actually it consisted of the islands
of fertility on the Tunisian coast. Carthage had been
colonised by Julius Caesar and was now refounded by Augustus.
There was no inland frontier. In the desert behind the
mountains there still flourished the wild Gaetulian nomads who
occasionally descended upon the peaceful province and provided
a Roman triumph. This was the reason why a legion was still
kept in Africa. The neighbouring kingdom of Mauretania
was assigned to an interesting young royal couple. The
husband was Juba, a descendant of Masinissa, who had been
educated as a Roman, had served in the Roman army and
was so complete a Greek scholar that he wrote among many
other works a history of the Drama. The wife was a daughter
of Cleopatra by Antony, who had ridden in Caesar's triumph at
Rome. Both Mauretania and its eastern neighbour Numidia,
which had been added to the Roman province, now settled
down to wealth and happiness under the Roman rule. The
splendid ruins which still survive indicate a prosperity which
has not as yet been completely recovered.
Cyrene, where the descendants of the Romans are now
carving out a province for themselves, though geographically
a part of the African continent, was historically regarded as
a Greek island, and united in one province with Crete. It
consisted of a group of five Greek cities with a large inter-
mixture of Jews. Cyrene has no history in this period, but
after the siege of Jerusalem there was a terrible outburst of
Jewish fanaticism. Thousands of Roman citizens were tortured
and slain.
Perhaps no country in the world has had such a chequered
208
AUGUSTUS
and miserable history as the pleasant island of Sicily with its
rich volcanic soil. For four hundred years it had been mainly
Greek. The eastern end, at least, had been scattered with
important city-states which, under the leadership of Syracuse,
had waged incessant conflict with the Carthaginian invaders in
their western strongholds. We have seen how the Romans
finally drove out the Semitic element and conquered the
Greeks. During the latter part of republican history the
island had been of vital importance to Rome as supplying
through its tribute the chief part of the corn-supply. At the
same time it had been cruelly exploited and oppressed by Roman
governors like Verres. Then during the civil wars Sextus
Pompeius had made it his head-quarters, and it had been laid
under heavy contributions by both sides. Messina, its richest
town, had been the scene of a sack and massacre. No country
had more to hope from the Pax Augusta, and it now began to
enjoy one of its brief periods of rest. Augustus spent the
winter of 22 in Sicily at the beginning of his tour in Greece.
He founded colonies at six famous cities of old. While he
was in the island the Sicilians offered him a kind of round-
robin of complaint against the extortion of his procurator.
Augustus instantly dismissed the offender and replaced him by
his own valued tutor, the philosopher Areus. It was thoroughly
in accordance with his policy to put a Greek philosopher in
charge of a Greek island.
So far we have been surveying the treatment of that part
of the Roman world which was already quite civilised and
mainly Greek. We now turn to the barbarian West and North,
mainly consisting of newly conquered Caesarian provinces. In
these quarters, the nearer parts of Spain and the Narbonensian
province of Gaul were the only regions which could be called
civilised. As soon as the provisional settlement of 27 B.C. was
effected Augustus hurried away to Gaul. It was generally
thought that he was on his way to conquer Britain, for that
was the second of the two tasks which Julius had left to his
successor. Accordingly the loyal Horace dutifully prays :
o 209
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
serues iturum Csesarem in ultimos
orbis Britannos.*
But this was not the time, and Augustus was not the man, for
dazzling conquests. " Hasten slowly" was his favourite motto,
and his empire policy was founded on the same principle. For
the present the Ocean, then called British, was boundary
enough. Augustus was reducing the army and Britain would
have taken at least a legion to keep it quiet. So Britain had
to delay its prospects of civilisation until Gaul and Spain were
organised and the German frontier settled. We have the
record of British chiefs coming to Rome with unknown petitions
during the period, but beyond that there is silence on our
island. As for Gaul, Julius had done the work of conquest
thoroughly enough, and the Gauls as an adaptable people
were taking to Roman civilisation with avidity. There were
indeed corners of it not yet enlightened and the whole govern-
ment required organisation. Augustus went straight to the
capital of the old province, Narbonne, and there; he arranged
a census and a land register, not, as Ferrero observes, out of
mere statistical curiosity. Probably no tribute had come in
from Gaul during the civil wars, and Augustus was much
concerned with finance. For the moment an outbreak in Spain
called the emperor away, but five years later he returned to
complete his work. The old province, which has passed into
history as Provence, was now handed back to the senate as com-
pletely pacified, and the rest of Gaul was eventually divided
into three parts : Aquitania, the half-Spanish south-west ; Lug-
dunensis (the east and centre stretching right across France
with its capital Lyons or Lugdunum on its eastern border) ; and
Belgica (the northern part with Trier — Augusta Treverorum,
not yet founded — and Rheims as its chief towns). This division
was mainly, though not entirely, based on racial considerations.
Together the three formed one of Qesar's provinces as
Gallia Comata.
* Mayst thou [Fortune] preserve Csesar, who marches against the Britons
at the ends of the earth. (Odes, I. xxxv. 29-30.)
210
AUGUSTUS
The treatment of the conquered land was wise and humane.
Druidical religion, already a waning force, was permitted to
exist, though it included human sacrifice and was hostile to the
Romans. In the reign of Claudius it was forbidden. But
other native deities were actually encouraged by the state, and
Augustus himself built an altar to some strange Gallic spirits.
But side by side with the native religion he fostered the new
cult, as in Asia, of "Rome and Augustus." There had always
been tribal councils which culminated in a great national
gathering at Lugdunum once a year. Apparently the presiding
priests had been elected from the well-born natives and were
in opposition to the Druids. Augustus made skilful use of
this organisation and fostered it in order to make it a centre
for Roman patriotism. He set up a great altar at Lugdunum
inscribed "to Rome and Augustus." It was constructed in a
sacred grove, and was surrounded by statues emblematic of
the sixty Gallic tribes. The elected priest had to be a Roman
citizen of Gallic birth. It soon became a distinction coveted
by the grandsons of those who had fought against Julius. This
is very characteristic of the systematic empire-building which
went on in the days of Augustus. Lugdunum rose to be a
great imperial city, the only city in Gaul which possessed full
Roman citizenship and had a mint of its own. From it a
great and elaborate road system radiated to all parts of France
very much in the same directions as the modern railways.
Schools were founded and the study of Latin encouraged
though not enforced. The Gauls took very ardently to their
new studies, displaying in particular a remarkable faculty for
rhetoric. The principle came into force that when a town or
district could show that it spoke Latin it received important
rights of citizenship, including that great privilege, the use of
Roman law. The land system of Gaul differed essentially from
that of Italy in that it was based on tribes and cantons instead
of cities. Already the towns were growing as centres for the
tribes, but to this day many of the names of French cities are
those of tribes rather than towns : thus Lutetia of the Parisii
211
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
is Paris, Durocortorum of the Remi is Rheims, Divodurum of
the Mediomatrici is Metz, and Agedincum of the Senones is
Sens. The tribute ultimately fixed was a high one but on the
whole justly regulated. It is probable that the ugly story of
Licinius and his extortions is told as an exceptional occurrence.
In any case Gaul was taught how to grow rich and prosperous.
Mines of silver and gold were successfully exploited, the
culture of flax was encouraged, and the soil was found to be
admirably suited to cereal crops. Gaul became a hive of in-
dustry and a source of ever-increasing wealth. She purchased
oil and wine from Italy as well as the articles of Eastern luxury
which passed through the hands of Roman merchants. A 2^
per cent, duty was charged at the frontier both on imports and
exports. Such were some of the methods by which the
Romanisation of Gaul was effected, and the foundations so well
and truly laid that through all the invasions of Franks and
Burgundians, Gaul remained Roman in speech and thought,
and remains so to this day.*
Of all the momentous problems which Augustus had to face,
the delimitation of the northern frontier was the weightiest.
It has always been one of the disputed questions of Roman
history, why Augustus, who was generally so cautious and so
unwilling to embark upon adventures, deliberately chose to
cross the Rhine and plunge into those impenetrable forests of
whose dangers and difficulties Julius Caesar had left so clear a
warning. Was it his aim to forestall the danger of a German
invasion of Gaul? On the other hand, the Rhine might well
seem a sufficient frontier, as indeed for many centuries it was.
Was it his aim to exercise his troops in difficult warfare and
perhaps secure military renown for the young men whom he had
destined for the succession? These are scarcely adequate
motives for a man like Augustus. Did he hope to accquire
wealth out of Germany as he had done out of Gaul ? He must
have known that the virgin forests and undrained morasses of
Germany would scarcely balance the difficulties and dangers of
* Plates 29-32.
212
AUGUSTUS
a campaign there, and that the Germans were far behind their
Gallic cousins in civilisation. The problem seems to me
insoluble unless we accept the theory that the whole scheme
was part of the search for a natural strategic frontier under-
taken with false notions of geography. It is certain that many
of the ancients believed that they would find the Ocean again
where Russia is, and that the Caspian Sea was part of it. In
that case the Romans may have hoped to round off their
empire satisfactorily in this direction. It would explain the
curious tactics by which Roman expeditions crossing the Rhine
and plunging into the heart of Germany ordered their fleets to
coast along the Dutch and Danish shores.
From whatever motives it was undertaken, this penetration
of Germany and its ultimate failure was a fact of vast conse-
quence in the history of Europe. From one point of view the
history of Europe may be described as a record of the various
relations between the Roman and the German elements, with
occasional incursions from the Celtic or Turanian fringes. It
is one long contest between Latin and Teutonic race, religion,
language, law, and ideas political and economic. Hence it is
impossible to overrate the importance of the moment when the
first round of that age-long contest was fought out and settled.
Hidden among the forests in those mysterious wildernesses
beyond the Rhine were the numerous tribes who were destined
one day to form the nations of Europe. Here were the
Saxons of Saxony and England, the Swabians, the Franks, the
Vandals, the Burgundians, the Goths, the Lombards, and many
others, yet unnamed, the germs of the nations.
It was by no means their first entrance on the stage of
history. We believe that the dominant races of historical
Greece, and perhaps of historical Rome, traced back their
ancestry to the central regions of Europe. Since then history
had recorded several alarming incursions of northern barbarians,
and in a general sense the story of the Mediterranean peoples
shows how wave after wave of strong warriors from the North
descended upon the fertile peninsulas of the South, which
213
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
always absorbed and assimilated them, until finally they became
a prey to the enervating influences of climate, melted into the
native strain, and had to make room for a fresh wave of un-
tamed northerners. Read in this light, extraordinary interest
attaches to the moment when all-conquering Rome attempted
to conquer the wilds which sheltered these mighty tribes. If
she had succeeded in taming and Romanising the Germans
also, as she had done with the Spaniards and Gauls, the course
of history might have been very different. But even then,
though she knew it not, behind the Teutonic peoples lay the
Slavs, and behind them the Tartars and the Huns. The task
of civilising the world from a single centre was impossible.
Augustus would have been wiser to choose a strong frontier first
and then proceed gradually by peaceful penetration. Probably
Augustus judged that the policy of buffer states which he had
applied in the East was not applicable to barbarians. As it
was, conquest was the method he selected, contrary to his usual
custom and contrary to his natural inclination. Herein success
led to over-confidence and so to disaster.
We always term the people over the wall " barbarians," but
the Germans had their various political and social systems and
some of their tribes were more civilised than others. By
comparing the Commentaries of Caesar with the Germania of
Tacitus we get a fairly comprehensive notion of German
institutions, which, it must be remembered, were those of our
own ancestors. They had no cities. Like the Gauls they
were grouped in tribes and the tribes were subdivided into
cantons, the cantons into villages. They lived on the produce
of their flocks and herds, on the chase, and on a primitive type
of "extensive" agriculture, which involved fresh ploughlands
every year and thus caused continual unrest and jostling of
tribe against tribe. This was what made them such trouble-
some neighbours to the Gauls, and led to those gigantic
"treks" which meet us from time to time in history. Their
only political system was a fighting organisation; hereditary
chiefs and princes led them in battle and the general in a large
214
2
S
ft!
td
O
ft!"
td
2
H
O!
O
as
O
J
H
AUGUSTUS
movement was elected from amongst the princes by the free-
men of the tribe. In peace there was no general magistracy,
but the elders and priests administered justice in the villages.
Among the warriors there was a rough freedom and equality.
The free warrior had very considerable rights, but only as a
warrior. Among the Suevi, according to Caesar, there were a
hundred cantons, each of which furnished a thousand men to
the army for a year's service while the rest stayed at home to
carry on agriculture and hunting. But this seems, if it is
accurate, to be an exceptional degree of organisation. The
chastity, the patriotism, the honesty of these barbarians as well
as their courage and gigantic stature were favourite themes for
Roman eloquence. It is likely enough that Tacitus heightened
their virtues with his satirical instinct in order to point a moral
to his fellow-countrymen.
Julius Caesar had left the Rhine as the frontier of his Gallic
provinces, though he had crossed it twice by way of recon-
naissance. Quite at the beginning of Augustus's presidency,
the Suevi had had to be chased back across the Rhine, and the
Treveri across the Moselle. At this time, Germany was still
for administrative purposes a part of the Gallic provinces, and
as a rule there was some high officer in charge of both. The
Rhine was not impassable to the barbarians, and moreover there
were Germanic tribes on both sides of it, such as the Treveri
of Trier and the Ubii of Cologne, who were in frequent inter-
course with their neighbours on the other side. This made
the river a somewhat insufficient boundary. There were inroads
of German barbarians in 29, 25, 20 and 16 B.C. In the latter
case a Roman legate was surprised and defeated, and the eagle
of the Fifth Legion carried off in triumph.
This brought Augustus to the spot, and he spent two years
in studying the problems of Gaul and Germany. In 12 B.C.
the first campaign was undertaken under the command of
Drusus, his younger stepson. Drusus, who was not yet twenty-
five, was the most brilliant figure of his day, brave, handsome,
virtuous, adored by the soldiers, and a thoroughly capable
215
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
general. On this occasion he crossed the Rhine and descended
into Dutch territory, laying waste the lands of the Sygambri
and the other hostile tribes who had provoked these punitive
measures. He accepted the submission of the Frisians who
lived on the coast of North Holland. During the winter his
troops seem to have been employed in cutting a canal from
the Rhine to the Zuyder Zee. Next year he crossed again,
marched on, and threw a bridge across the Lippe, crossed the
territory of the Cherusci — the most warlike of all the tribes —
and halted on the banks of the Weser. He built a great fort
at the junction of the Lippe and the Alme or Ems, and cut a
highway along the banks of the Lippe to join the new fort
Aliso with a great camp on the Rhine near Xanten. In the
next year there was more building and settling, and in 9 B.C.
came the great effort. Drusus marched out into Suabia
and Cheruscia, crossed the Weser, ravaging everywhere, and
reached the Elbe. This river he essayed to cross, but he could
not, and, as the historians put it, omens appeared to forbid
further progress. This then was the Roman limit. Somewhere
between the Saale and the Weser, Drusus fell from his horse
and sustained injuries which resulted in his death. Augustus,
though greatly grieved, determined to continue his operations.
Tiberius was sent to continue the work, and 40,000 Sygambrians
were transported into Roman territory. We know little of the
work of the next dozen years. Another legate reached the
Elbe. A great viaduct was constructed between the Ems and
the Rhine. During this period the pacification was apparently
proceeding with rapidity. Many of the young Germans came
into the Roman camp and learnt Roman ways and Latin speech.
The head-quarters were still at Vetera Castra near Xanten and
at Mogontiacum (Mainz), with summer quarters at Aliso. In
A.D. 4 fresh campaigns were undertaken by Tiberius. For
many of these expeditions the Roman historians offer no excuse
or justification. They record with pride the immense slaughter
and devastation that accompanied them. It is hard to resist
the conclusion that much of this fighting was undertaken for
216
O
o
s
o
<
-•
SH
AUGUSTUS
its own sake, or to exercise the legions. In A.D. 5 the greatest
expedition of all was undertaken. There was a great " durbar "
at which the wild Chauci and Cherusci handed in their weapons
and did obeisance to the Roman general. The Langobardi
— later known as the Lombards — submitted, and Tiberius
crossed the Elbe itself, while the fleet which had "circum-
navigated the recesses of the Ocean" sailed up the river to
meet the army with supplies. All seemed to be going well :
Germany was nearly conquered. There only remained the
powerful kingdom of the Marcomanni under King Marbod, who
dwelt in the fastnesses of Bohemia. Marbod was an able ruler
who alone in Germany had succeeded in establishing a strong
throne, and had drilled a powerful army of 70,000 foot and
4000 horse. As the historian Velleius observes, his Alpine
boundaries were only two hundred miles from Italy, and this
formidable power was a real menace to the safety of the empire.
Accordingly elaborate plans were made for his destruction by
an invasion from three sides at once. Unfortunately just at
the moment when the armies were converging upon their prey,
there broke out the great Pannonian and Illyrian revolt of
A.D. 6, which brought all the tribes of Austria down upon the
Romans. It was one of the most dangerous moments in
Roman history. Fifteen legions were employed against them,
and the military resources of the Empire
strained almost to breaking-point. Luckily
for Rome, Marbod made no attempt to
join the revolt, and the barbarians were
under divided leadership. Germanicus,
the son of Drusus, helped Tiberius to crush
them, but it took three or four years to
accomplish it.
Meanwhile Germany itself had to be Portrait of Varus
content with inferior legates. Quintilius
Varus was one of those amiable men who cause mutinies by
kindness. He fancied that Germany was tranquil. He went
about founding cities, holding assizes, collecting tribute and
217
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
giving justice according to Roman law precisely " as if he had
been a city praetor in the Forum at Rome and not a general
in the German forests." Accordingly in A.D. 9 a plot was
hatched against him. He was enticed away into the recesses
of the Saltus Teutoburgiensis and slaughtered. Then the
Cheruscan army swept down upon the three Roman legions
and destroyed them.
In itself the disaster was not overwhelming. Three legions
had perished, but fifteen more, flushed with their recent victory
over the Illyrians, were at hand to avenge them. The
Cheruscans immediately submitted and Germanicus found no
serious opposition when he penetrated Germany on an errand
of chastisement. But for Augustus the reverse was decisive.
He was now an old enfeebled man. When he heard of the
disaster he beat his head against the wall and was often heard
to cry : " Varus, give me back my legions." He saw that there
was no end to these adventures in the forest and no profit in
them. As a frontier the Elbe was no better than the Rhine.
Therefore he had the supremely good sense to accept the
Rhine as his frontier. Henceforth Rhine and Danube with
roads and forts along them, and with special arrangements to
strengthen the angle where the rivers run small — that should
be bulwark enough for the present. And so it was.
The patriotism of German historians has made of this
defeat of Varus rather more than it deserves. Arminius the
young Cheruscan who led the attack was a patriot though a
traitor. He had been, says Velleius, a faithful ally in previous
campaigns and had even attained Roman citizenship and
equestrian rank. He spoke Latin fluently. His very name is
most probably a Latin cognomen, though the patriotism of the
Germans will call him " Hermann." So the German student of
to-day sings over his beer :
Dann zieh'n wir aus zur Hermannschlacht
Und wollen Rache haben.
It was not half so gallant an act of revolt as that of our British
218
8
O
OS
W
n
w
AUGUSTUS
lady, Boadicea, but it had the merit of success. The Germans
were able to develop their strength behind the artificial
ramparts of the Rhine and Danube until the time came for
them to burst through in conquest.
It is commonly said that Augustus immediately after A.D. 9
formed two provinces called Upper and Lower Germany along
the Rhine as if to conceal his loss of the real Germany. This
is not exact. In the warfare of Tiberius's days the historians
speak only of the Upper or the Lower Army in Germany, and
Augustus in his monument speaks of Germany in the singular.
Under Tiberius ample revenge was taken for the defeat and
Germanicus again and again traversed Germany. The Varus
disaster was only one of the episodes which decided the
Romans to halt at the Rhine. Aliso was long retained as an
outpost, and colonies of Roman veterans were planted on
German soil. The Cheruscans and Arminius were defeated in
a tremendous battle at Idistavisus near Minden on the Weser
in A.D. 1 6. But on the way back the Roman fleet was ship-
wrecked and a great many prisoners fell into the hands of the
Germans. Some of these were sold as slaves to the Britons and
many eventually returned to Rome bringing back marvellous
stories of their adventures. As for Marbod, he was defeated
in a battle with the Cheruscans and took refuge on Roman
soil, where he lived for eighteen years at Ravenna. Arminius,
his conqueror, began to play the tyrant in his native tribe and
was slain by the treachery of his kinsmen at the age of thirty-
seven. His wife Thusnelda and his son had long ago fallen
into the hands of the Romans and the boy grew up as a Roman
citizen.
The headquarters of the Rhine legions continued to be at
Mainz and Xanten with summer quarters at the new Colonia
which became Cologne. Four legions of the Upper Army
were stationed at the former, and four of the Lower Army at
the latter. In due course, we cannot say when, these became
the centres of two separate provinces. On the Danube there
were three legions in Pannonia, the great new Austrian province.
219
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Along this frontier there was now a double line of Caesarian
provinces. Rhaetia and Noricum were conquered in 15 B.C.
Then there were tedious and unprofitable campaigns in the
southern Swiss valleys as the result of which a row of little
Alpine prefectures was established. There is still a fine
monument to Augustus on the heights above Monaco
enumerating forty-six Alpine tribes made subject to Rome.
It was erected by the gratitude of the Italian farmers, for the
Alpine tribes had always scourged the plains. Roads were
constructed here and there over the Alps. The principal pass
to Germany lay by way of Turin and the St. Bernard with
Augusta (Aosta) to guard it. In Pannonia the old route from
Aquilegia over the Julian Alps was restored and a new Via
Claudia constructed up the valley of the Adige from Tridentum
(Trent) to Augusta (Augsburg). To round off the Danube
frontier Moesia or Mysia was conquered quite at the beginning
of the period and added as an Imperial province, probably in
A.D. 6, under a prefect. It stretched along the south bank of
the Danube, down to the Black Sea, and embraced part of the
Balkan high lands. Thus with strong legions posted in
permanent encampments all along the Rhine and Danube, Rome
had now a satisfactory northern frontier which only required
guarding to keep Rome and Italy in security.
Spain had never been entirely subjugated though it had
been in the possession of the Republic for nearly two centuries.
Parts of it indeed were almost as Roman as Rome. Gades
and Corduba, for example, were centres of learning and
literature, soon to produce citizens of renown in Lucan, Seneca,
Martial, Quintilian, and an emperor in Trajan — a most dis-
tinguished galaxy. But a great part of Spain was still in the
hands of wild and chivalrous barbarians. Particularly in the north-
west the Cantabrians and Asturians were a menace to the
peaceful province. For eight years and more the Romans
continued to fight them with brief intervals termed "victories."
Augustus himself came over in 26 B.C. and directed operations
comfortably from Tarraco. The leader of the rebels was a
220
55
5
D
»J
O
u
2:
H
s
O
AUGUSTUS
hero-chief called Corocotta who so exasperated the Romans
that Augustus offered .£10,000 for his capture. This sum the
brigand earned by walking into the Roman camp to surrender,
and Augustus, charmed at the idea, gave him his liberty as
well as the reward. He married a Roman wife and died a
Roman citizen as Gaius Julius Caracuttus. Caesar himself fell
seriously ill in the course of the long campaign. Both sides
increased in ferocity. The Romans crucified their prisoners
and the Spaniards mocked them from the cross. Finally
Augustus had to send for Agrippa to finish the business, which
he did in 19 B.C. Now Spain was really conquered for ever
and even the northern highlanders laid down their arms and
accepted civilisation. Bsetica, the southern part of the
peninsula, was given to the senate to govern, and the northern
half divided into the two imperial provinces, Tarraconensis
and Lusitania, the latter corresponding roughly to modern
Portugal. In Spain also altars were erected to Rome and
Augustus. Roads radiated out from Tarraco. Many towns
were founded, such as Caesar Augusta (Saragossa), Augusta
Emerita (Merida), Pax Julia (Beja), Legiones (Leon), Asturica
Augusta (Astorga). The Celtic religion and probably the
very language quickly became extinct. Even in the time of
Augustus there were fifty communities with full Roman
citizenship. New mines were discovered and vigorously
worked, new industries, especially in metal, carefully fostered.
This brief and imperfect sketch of the Roman Empire, as it
took shape under the all-seeing eye of Augustus, should indicate,
more than all the triumphs she won in battle, more, even, than
the story of the Punic Wars, the real "Grandeur that was
Rome." The true greatness of the Roman lies in his indomit-
able energy and his practical good sense, not to be obscured
by the surface of rhetorical culture which had come to over-
lay it in these latter generations. Now that Rome had at last
secured for herself a reasonably secure and sensible form of
government, she was able to exercise her natural capacity for
221
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
affairs and to play the part which destiny had assigned to her
of propagating civilisation throughout Europe. If the his-
torians would allow us, we should gladly turn away from the
wars and proscriptions to study the quiet useful work which
she was performing now and henceforth in every corner of her
empire. The motive was, no doubt, self-interest, but it was
that broad and far-seeing selfishness which in the realm of
public affairs is the nearest approach to altruism. The
Republic that sucked the blood of her provinces is detestable
to all right-thinking men. The autocracy that cleared out the
canals in Egypt, planted flax and encouraged pottery in Gaul,
irrigated Africa and taught agriculture to the Moorish nomads,
set the wild Iberians to mining and weaving, built aqueducts
and roads everywhere, established a postal system and policed
land and sea so effectively that a man might fare from York
to Palmyra, or from Trier to Morocco " with his bosom full of
gold," may be tyranny governing in its own interests, but it is
an institution for which the world has every reason to be
grateful.
222
z
s
p
o
u
rsi
z
A
H
a
Id
H
V
AUGUSTAN ROME
Pater argentarius, ego Corinthiarius.
Anonymous satire on. Augustus quoted by SUETONIUS.
HROUGHOUT his great task of repairing
a world which had fallen to pieces, Augus-
tus was by no means ignorant of the fact
that it is the " spirit that maketh alive."
Indeed it was his constant endeavour to
alter facts without changing their names.
He was well aware that Sulla had failed
miserably when he tossed the Romans a
constitution and left nothing but an oath to
support it. To adjust frontiers and organise
new provinces with the help of his trusty
and invincible little legionaries was probably the pleasantest
and the easiest part of Caesar's task. To reform the ancient
imperial city with her centuries of proud and brutal tradition
was equally essential, but it was desperate work. For the
Empire of Augustus was born into the world suffering
from degeneration of the heart. The nobility, upon which
everything that was great and glorious in Roman history de-
pended, was morally corrupt, intellectually inert, spiritually
void, and even physically decrepit and sterile. The civil wars
and proscriptions had systematically pruned away all that was
virile and spirited in its ranks. The trimmers and nonentities
had survived. The women, long since deprived of the iron
control which had kept them in order under the old system of
the Roman family, dominated society with an influence that
223
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
was generally evil. The Roman boudoir with its throng of
slaves and parasites was not only profligate, but it had already
begun to produce the type of murderous intriguers which we
meet more prominently in the Messalinas and Faustinas of
imperial history. But as there were virtuous exceptions like
Octavia and Agrippina among the women, so there were
among the men a few nobles of probity and honour who had
somehow, probably by hiding themselves away on their country
estates, survived all the conflicts of the past generation. But
these, who read Roman history in the same light as Livy, were
lovers of the old regime, suspicious and bitterly jealous of
the new. We have seen that one of the first official acts of
Augustus was to restore the patriciate. But it is easier to
make peers than patricians, and we may be sure that there was
little love between the old aristocracy and the new. Augustus
himself, though the "son of the god Julius" and descended
through his mother from Venus and Anchises, was on the
father's side only just respectable. By nature and instinct,
however, he was an aristocrat. All his life long he strove to
win over the aristocracy to the support of his regime. But
he failed, and failed disastrously. Whence throughout the
history of the Empire we have in existence more or less pro-
minently a conservative opposition of old nobles, genuine or
spurious, sometimes plotting manfully and dying nobly, but
more often sneering and writing in secret against the emperors.
But most of the old aristocracy lacked the spirit to oppose
Augustus. The few plots which came to light were con-
temptible affairs. Some of the nobles came down to the senate
and devoted their intellects to the choice of a new cognomen
for the new Csesar, or vied with one another in proposing fresh
titles of honour for him. But they soon discovered that
flattery was not very lucrative in the face of their chilly and
statuesque master. Politics at Rome had lost their savour
when there was no chance of blood to follow. The noble
senators had to be coerced into attending at the curia; they
devoted their gifts to drawing-room battles, they collected objets
224
FIG. I. RELIEF FROM A SARCOPHAGUS
AHtiari
FIG. 2. ROMAN AND DACIAN
PLATE LVII
AUGUSTAN ROME
de luxe, they wrote bad verses and sometimes bad histories, and
they practised all the vices. They had no religion and very
little philosophy. Above all the old Roman family upon which
the piers of Roman society had rested was now in ruins. To
be the husband of one wife from marriage to death was, so far as
the records go, a rare exception. This was no innovation of the
Empire. For a century or more men had changed their wives
every few 'years for the sake of a fortune or a political alliance.
Augustus set before himself, as one of the most important
phases of his task of regeneration, the moral purification of
this society. He had provided the provinces with a new
religion which involved a new social organisation. But the
cloak of republicanism in which he had chosen to drape his
autocracy forbade him to make himself a god in Rome. On
the contrary he steadily forbade extravagant flattery. He was
not even to be called " dominus." It is true that the mayors
of the new boroughs into which he divided Rome were allowed
to set up altars to the Lares and Genius of Augustus.* Outside
the city throughout Italy there were temples to Augustus and
priests in his service. As usual it was a mere quibble when
he declined divine honours in Rome. Vergil had plainly
called him a god at the very moment when he was dyeing his
hands in Roman blood. Julius Caesar had been formally
deified and Augustus regularly styled himself "divi filius."
The title of "augustus" itself carried the notion of tran-
scendent power. Thus the emperor stood on the threshold of
heaven, at any rate for the poorer classes, even in Rome itself.
But for the aristocracy something else was needed: it is of
little profit to claim divinity in a society of atheists. For
Roman society, as typified by Ovid, the gods were little more
than a literary convention, and it would do a respectable man
little credit to be enrolled in their company.
For the reformation of Roman society Augustus had
recourse to three methods — legislation, culture, and example.
The legislation consisted of a whole series of laws solemnly
* Plate 35, Fig. i.
P 225
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
passed through senate and comitia in the years 18 and 17 B.C.
To give them additional sanctity they were called Julian laws.
There was one enacting heavier penalties for adultery, another
permitting marriage between citizens and freedwomen, designed
to meet the circumstance that men outnumbered women in the
ranks of the aristocracy. There were also sumptuary laws to
curb extravagance. There were laws imposing penalties on
celibacy and discouraging the fortune-hunters who lay in wait
for the rich bachelor's legacies. Fiscal privileges were granted
to the fathers of families, and Augustus himself went down to
the house and read the senate an old speech of Metellus on
the increase of population. Unfortunately the emperor himself
had not set a good example in the matter of parentage. He
had had three wives but only one child, a daughter. Still he
exhibited himself in the theatre in the capacity of a father by
collecting the children of Germanicus about his knees. Of
course legislation proved quite helpless in the matter, besides
arousing a good deal of ill-feeling which was chiefly displayed
in the ranks of the knights.
Augustus was in a very difficult position when it came to
setting an example. The principal evils which his social code
was designed to remedy were the prevalence of adultery, the
frequency of divorce, voluntary celibacy and formal marriages
contracted without intention of producing offspring, and finally,
as a consequence of celibacy, the prevalence of a regular pro-
fession of fortune-hunting. There was scarcely one of these
necessary reforms to which Caesar himself came with clean
hands. He had begun his matrimonial career by repudiating
his young betrothed ; he had then married an immature virgin,
and divorced her for political reasons before the marriage was
consummated; in the third place he had married Scribonia,
who had already had two husbands, and whose son was already
a man at the time of her marriage to Augustus. She was many
years older than he, and the marriage was intended to secure
a reconciliation with Sextus Pompeius. This third matrimonial
venture was terminated in a manner which shocked even
226
AUGUSTAN ROME
Roman society. On the very day when Scribonia became a
mother by him, Augustus put her away charging her with
immorality, though he kept her infant Julia as his own and
only child. He had been fascinated, it seems, by the fair face
and brilliant abilities of Livia Drusilla. Livia was of the
highest ancestry in Rome, a descendant of Appius Claudius,
and attached by adoption to another very noble family, the
Livii. Also she had married another scion of the illustrious
Claudian house, the proudest in Rome, and at the age of fifteen
had become the mother of Tiberius. Her father had chosen
the losing side at Philippi, and committed suicide after the
battle. Her husband, Claudius Nero, had taken arms against
Augustus — or Octavian, as he then was — in the Perusine
War, and his life was forfeited. His beautiful wife sued the
conqueror for mercy, and mercy was granted upon conditions.
Nero was compelled not only to divorce his wife, but to act the
part of a father and give her away in marriage to Augustus.
She was then not only the mother of Tiberius, but just about
to become the mother of Drusus, who was born in the house
of Augustus three months after the marriage. This, then, was
the model family on the Palatine which was to set an example
to the Roman aristocracy — a daughter whose mother had been
divorced on the day of her birth, a mother who had been sold
by her husband, and two stepsons whose father had been
divorced. The sequel scarcely improved matters. Julia grew
up and was married first to the boy Marcellus, then to Agrippa,
by whom she had a large family, and when Agrippa died,
Tiberius was forced to put away his wife, Agrippa's daughter
Vipsania, whom he really loved, and marry the widow Julia,
whose immorality he knew and detested. At last the profligacy
of Julia grew so open and notorious that Augustus was in-
formed of it and compelled to banish her in company with her
mother Scribonia, who had survived to see her shame. Later
on a second Julia, the daughter of the first, suffered a precisely
similar fate.
As for Livia the empress, if we choose to call her by that
227
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
title, there is no doubt that she was a singularly beautiful and
clever woman, who managed to retain the affections of Augustus
for over forty years — in itself a remarkable feat in Roman
society. History records in her favour many acts of royal
mercy and charity. She seconded her husband's efforts at
reform, and established a powerful ascendancy over him and
over Tiberius. There is no whisper against her chastity when
once she entered the household of Augustus. But on the other
hand there are very serious charges of crime made by contem-
poraries and recorded by Tacitus, charges which are supported
by the strongest circumstantial evidence. The suspicion is that
she was fighting all her life long without remorse or scruple for
the succession of her son Tiberius. Augustus did not intend
to be succeeded by a Claudius. This he showed again and
again in the most public manner. His aim, as soon as he knew
that he was destined to leave no male offspring of his own body,
was to leave the succession in the sacred Julian line, the family
descended from Venus, the house of the star. But that could
only be secured through the female line. His first choice was
the brilliant young Marcellus, son of his sister Octavia.
Marcellus, who had been the first husband of Julia, died of a
mysterious complaint just as he came of age. Then Augustus
married Julia to Agrippa, and two of her sons, Gaius and
Lucius, were next chosen for the succession. They grew up
and came of age. Just as they were beginning public life,
Tiberius having been banished to make way for them, they too
died in the same year, Lucius on board ship as he was sailing
to Marseilles, Gaius as the sequel to an assassin's blow given
him in Armenia. In the first case we have no details. In the
second, Gaius was recovering from his wound, but he turned
aside to an obscure town on the southern coast of Asia Minor,
refused the warship which had been sent to convey him home,
and begged to be allowed to live there in obscurity. The
circumstance is full of suspicion and mystery. Moreover,
before his rivals were dead Tiberius had word, from a well-
informed prophet, of their approaching decease, and returned to
228
AUGUSTAN ROME
Rome. He himself, living in banishment, must be acquitted
of active complicity in the crime. Julia was banished to a
lonely island. Her third son was also put out of sight for no
crime but sulkiness and grumbling against his stepmother.
Deprived of all his hopes, Augustus with very marked re-
luctance adopted Tiberius, but in his old age he still cherished
the idea of a reconciliation with Julia's third son, Agrippa
Postumus, and actually visited in secret the remote island
where he was interned. But as soon as Augustus was dead
— and his death was carefully concealed as long as possible —
Agrippa Postumus was murdered, and this time we have direct
evidence that the crime was Livia's. This sort of domestic
intrigue, marked by hideous murders, is one of the blackest
features of imperial history at Rome. It arose very largely
from the illegitimate character of the imperial throne, and the
absence of any legalised system of succession.
Nevertheless, out of these unpromising materials Augustus
endeavoured to organise a model Roman family of the old
style. Livia and Julia were set to work at spinning and
weaving. Augustus would wear no cloaks but of their making.
Julia was solemnly counselled never to do or say anything
which she would be ashamed to write in her diary. Once when
she built a palace for herself Augustus had it demolished. The
house on the Palatine was of the simplest character, with a
humble portico of the local tufa from Alba and no decorated
pavements. In food and drink he was most abstemious, and
indeed the prodigious industry of his life left little time for
banquets. A slice of bread made from inferior flour, with a
relish of pickled fish or dates or olives, often served him for
the day. He never drank more than a pint of wine. He slept
winter and summer in the same room, and spent most of the
year in the city, unless he was travelling. His favourite
country seat was on the island of Capri where he could be sure
of freedom. His pleasures were simple and almost childish.
He liked a little mild gambling, he was fond of playing
knuckle-bones with little slave-boys. He attended the circus
229
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
as a matter of duty and was very strict in enforcing decency of
behaviour there. He set his face against changes of fashion
and insisted that Roman citizens should wear the old-fashioned
toga in public. All his instincts seem to have been for
simplicity and clemency. He never permitted a freedman to
appear at his dinner-table, but when a slave of his once pushed
his master into the way of a charging wild boar in order to
shield himself Augustus dismissed the matter with a joke. On
the other hand, when the tutor and servants of Gaius showed
themselves tyrannical and overbearing to the provincials after
their young master's death, Caesar had them drowned like rats.
Towards personal abuse of himself he was singularly indifferent.
It remains difficult to visualise the character of Augustus.
Originally he was a typical Roman, as callous towards blood-
shed and suffering as the rest of them and quite unscrupulous
in his progress towards power. But when he had attained it
he had the greatness of mind to perceive that his work of
repair could only be done by setting an example of virtuous
living and moderation. Self-control was perhaps his most
powerful quality.
Twice his self-command broke down. Once when he heard
of the defeat of Varus in Germany with the loss of his three
legions, and again when some one, probably Livia, revealed to
him the scandal concerning Julia. Apart from the blow to his
honour as a man, it was the undoing of all his measures for
reform and the open publication of their futility. " Her orgies,"
men said, "had been conducted upon the very rostra whence
her father's laws against adultery had been proclaimed." Her
accomplices included the flower of the old aristocracy, a Scipio
and a Gracchus. Augustus hid himself from the sight of men,
banished his daughter to a remote island and officially informed
the senate by letter of her disgrace. He was heard to cry out
that he envied the father of Phcebe, one of Julia's slaves who
had hanged herself when the scandal went abroad. He quoted
a Greek verse :
"O that I had been unwedded and died without a child,"
230
,A
AUGUSTAN ROME
and he spoke of his wicked daughter as the cancer of his
life.
Legislation was obviously futile, and example had broken
down. It was only from within that Roman society could be
reformed, only by supplying a spiritual influence which could
counteract the materialism and immorality of the day.
Augustus had tried in the provinces to raise up a new religion
of loyalty and patriotism centred round the altar "to Rome
and Augustus." But that was obviously impossible in Rome
itself. The only inspiring motive — in addition to Stoicism
which could never be a popular creed — had been, for the last
two or three centuries, patriotism, the worship of the sacred
city and her glorious destinies. But even that had been
shattered by the civil wars. Augustus now set himself
deliberately to the task of creating a new Rome and a new
Roman culture. He himself, like most of the nobles of his
day, had received a Greek education. It was what we should
call a good classical education in philosophy, literature, and
rhetoric. Besides that he had been initiated into the
Eleusinian mysteries at Athens, and they were probably the
most powerful source of inspiration in the Mediterranean world,
for even eclectics like Cicero admitted that they carried with
them a hope of immortality. Augustus was himself deeply
imbued with Greek culture and like most Roman nobles had
dabbled in literature. Thus it is not surprising that the type
of civilisation which he fostered in the new Rome was quite as
much Greek as Italian. The age of Augustus was in fact the
culmination of Graeco-Roman culture alike in arts and letters
because the fusion between the two races was now complete.
Elsewhere I have ventured to rebel against the current
practice in history of subordinating the arts to politics and
declaring that artistic production depends upon political facts.
It is not so. Literary and artistic results are due to literary
and artistic causes. The Roman literary language had only
just attained perfection. Cicero had perfected it for prose, and
it only remained for poetry to produce a Vergil. Everybody
231
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
at Rome from Augustus downwards was busily writing hexa-
meters in his spare time, and the recitals which were given at
every dinner-party formed one of the social inflictions of the
day. Just as Julius Caesar and Cicero had thrown off their
epics, so the great men of the succeeding age were poets —
Augustus, Pollio, Maecenas, Gallus, and all of them except
Agrippa. But alongside of these distinguished amateurs, pro-
fessional literary men of humble birth were now coming to the
front. Vergil and Horace are not originally the products of
the Augustan age, for they were both established poets before
it began. But the conditions of art at Rome were such that a
professional man of letters depended very closely upon a patron.
That was the tradition handed on from the days of Plautus,
when the writers had nearly always been foreign slaves or
clients. Cicero, Caesar, Lucretius, and Catullus had not been
of the client class. They had flourished in that brief interval
when it still seemed possible for Rome to develop a genuine
free literature of her own. But that possibility had been killed
like so many other hopes by the civil wars, and now the
choice lay mainly between distinguished scribblers or obsequious
literary craftsmen. Thus we get a second courtly period of
literature like that of the Ptolemies at Alexandria, like that of
Louis XIV. or of our own Stuart age when poets wrote to
please individual patrons. The patron, if he be a man of taste,
generally demands a very high degree of finish, and thus it is
the courtly ages which produce the finished craftsmanship. It
may be remarked that the ages of private patronage have given
the world much of its greatest literature.
In the age of Augustus there was no censorship of letters
such as generally prevailed under the stricter emperors of later
days. Livy was permitted to publish his great history without
curtailment of its strong republican tendency. When libels
and pasquinades appeared against Caesar he was content to con-
tradict them in a proclamation. Nevertheless he made his
influence weightily felt in the world of letters. He gave more
than ;£ 1 0,000 to Varius for a tragedy which posterity has not
232
•"-•..•• "...
^:r*^:>:,.
PLATE LX. BA'ALREK : THE TEMPLE OF ZKUS
AUGUSTAN ROME
thought worth while to preserve. He was himself a kindly and
patient listener at the recitation of poems and history, speeches
and dialogues, which formed the usual mode of first publication
in those days. He only insisted that his own deeds should not
form the subject of trivial composition by inferior authors.
Horace appears at first to have been warned off from treatment
of imperial politics. Vergil too in his early days received a
hint not to sing of wars and kings. But later on both these
writers were explicitly enlisted in the service of the state. In
this part of the work Maecenas was the emperor's chief agent.
Maecenas, whose name has come to symbolise literary patronage,
was a wealthy noble of an old Etruscan family who was con-
tent, like Cicero's friend Atticus, to pull the wires of state
largely by keeping generous hospitality and knowing all the
important characters of his day. Luxurious and effeminate in
his tastes, he gathered a group of talented authors round his
table, and very distinctly suggested to them the lines upon which
he desired them to work. Vergil, Varius, Horace, and Propertius
were members of his salon. Another noble of high lineage,
M. Valerius Messalla, maintained a rival coterie whose most
prominent member was the elegiac poet Tibullus. Vergil, a
half-Italian native of Mantua, who was not even a citizen by
birth, had sprung into fame with his Bucolics, a series of
pastoral idylls in the style of Theocritus. But though he was
a provincial by birth, though he writes of shepherds and sings
pathetically of his ancestral farm, nothing is more untrue than
to regard him as a son of the soil, or an inspired ploughboy
after the manner of Robert Burns. On the contrary he had
received an elaborate education in the style of the day under
Greek masters at Cremona, Milan, and Rome. He was steeped
in Greek philosophy and letters. His shepherds are not the
unsophisticated rustics of the Mantuan plain. They are shep-
herds "a la Watteau," borrowed from the pages of Theocritus,
and though many a brilliant epithet displays the Italian's loving
observation of nature, the background of the work is artificial
and literary rather than rustic or natural. His shepherds, like
233
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Sidney's, talk politics under a transparent disguise, which is
often extremely incongruous. They are often engaged in
praising Gallus or Varus or Pollio, the young poet's patrons.
It was the success of the Bucolics which' led Maecenas to choose
Vergil for carrying out an important literary project. A poet
was required to sing the praises of country life in such a manner
as to encourage the movement "back to the land," which
Augustus was trying to foster. In his Georgics Vergil frankly
admits that he is fulfilling the " hard commands " of Maecenas.
The Georgics are a treatise on husbandry, but here again it is
not first-hand work. We are informed that Vergil's poetry had
regained him his paternal farm at Mantua. But the Georgics
were not written on the farm. They were diligently composed in
a library at Naples. They arose from the study of Aratus and
Hesiod, not from memory of Italian life, and even in those
gorgeous passages where Vergil is praising a country life, it is
not of the Italian farm that he is thinking but of literary
hills and dells in Greece. I think it is clear that the poet took
little pleasure in his task. He very gladly digresses from the
description of soils and mattocks to tell us a charming piece
of Greek mythology or to introduce a literary reference.
Octavian had been a " powerful god " already in the Eclogues
before he became Augustus. Now the only question is which
of the stars shall receive him after death. "Already the
blazing Scorpion contracts his arms and leaves thee more than
a fair share of heaven." Vergil pauses to depict the triumph of
Augustus — Nile flowing with blood, Asia tamed, the Niphates
driven back, the Parthian conquered. No literary catchword
was ever more absurd than the phrase "rustic of genius"
applied to Vergil. As soon as he had the means, he gladly
turned his back upon his ancestral farm to become a student
and a courtier. Nevertheless Maecenas was magnificently
served. Vergil had already forged a weapon of matchless
music and eloquence in his surging hexameters, and he used it
to depict the honest joys of rustic toil, the laborious tranquillity
of the farm, the beauty and interest of nature. He was
234
ai
O
5
u
w
&
w
Cd
K
<
AUGUSTAN ROME
instantly recognised by Augustus as the destined laureate of
the new Rome.
The j*Eneid was solemnly devoted to the altar of Rome and
Augustus. Homer was the Greek model here, as Theocritus
had been for the Bucolics and Hesiod for the Georgics. The
origin of Rome was to be linked on to the Trojan story as had
already been done by the inventive Greeks. /Eneas had fled
from Troy to Italy, and had left his son Julus (the eponymous
hero of the Julian house) to found an heroic kingdom in Italy
long before the genuine Roman heroes. Thus the humble
native story of Romulus was superseded. Piety was to be the
great virtue honoured by this poem, for piety towards the
memory of Julius Ceesar was the principal title upon which
Augustus rested his claim to honour. There were other
analogies, perhaps. Dido most probably suggested Cleopatra
to the Roman reader. But it is.^to the praise of Rome, to the
glorification of that sense of filial duty which the Romans called
" piety " that the great epic is mainly devoted. Here again,
though the eloquence is so splendid and the versification so
majestic, the s&neid like its predecessors is a work of the
study quite clearly written to order. The plot is carelessly con-
structed. /Eneas himself, with all his piety, never for a moment
lives. The religious motives which led to his desertion of
Dido barely satisfy us. /Eneas makes the speeches, and the
gods continually intervene when danger threatens him. Our
sympathies are generally with the enemy, with Turnus or Camilla.
/Eneas is as chilly and statuesque as Augustus himself.
It is in the famous Sixth Book, which tells of the descent
to Hades, that the praise of Rome is most elegant and most
explicit. Here we are shown the heroes of Roman history side
by side with the heroes of the Greeks, and here the young
Marcellus, lately dead, is introduced in those immortal and
touching lines which caused Octavia his mother to swoon when
the poet recited them. Here too the poet pronounces in very
significant language the Roman idea of the destiny of his
race.
235
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
excudent alii spirantia mollius sera,
credo equidem, uiuos ducent de marmore uoltus,
orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus
describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent :
tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento ;
hae tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem,
parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos.
" Others shall mould, I doubt not, the breathing bronze more
delicately and draw the living features out of marble, others
shall plead causes more eloquently, map out the wanderings of
the sky with the rod, and tell the risings of the stars. Thou,
Roman, forget not to govern the nations under thy sway.
These shall be thy arts : to impose the rule of peace, to spare
the subject, and defeat the proud." In these lines we hear the
proud Philistinism of an imperial people. This is the genuine
Roman (dare I add " British " ?) attitude towards the arts and
sciences. They are for others to provide, for Greeks and
Egyptians. Even oratory, the highest achievement of the
Roman genius in literature, is thus scornfully thrown to the
foreigner. The Romans knew that they could buy or seize
better statues than they could carve : their task was to conquer
and govern — not an ignoble art.
The sEneid is explicitly a national laureate poem. The
poet seeks to enshrine all Roman life in his pages, to epitomise
Roman history and to introduce allusions to characteristic
pieces of myth and ritual. He inserts whole lines of Ennius
or Lucretius when they please him. They are superseded and
replaced. Just like Dryden, he feels that he is the heir of the
ages. The extraordinary popularity which Vergil attained
even in his own lifetime grew in the course of a few centuries
almost into a cult. His tomb became an object of pilgrimage ;
in early Christian times he became a prophet and in the Middle
Ages a wizard. The gentleness and purity of his personal life
played their part in the creation of this strange Vergilian legend.
Horace had less of the courtier's suppleness and required
winning to the imperial cause. It took two efforts of Maecenas
236
LXII. BA-ALBEK : THK TEMPLF. OF BACCHUS, EAST PORTICO
AUGUSTAN ROME
to secure him and we have letters preserved in which Augustus
very good-humouredly confesses his disappointment that Horace
has refused a secretaryship. Horace was the son of a freedman,
as he was not in the least ashamed to confess. But his father
had managed to secure for Quintus the education of a gentle-
man under Greek teachers in Rome, himself attending the boy
to school in place of the rascally pedagogue slaves who usually
undertook that office. Horace had further enjoyed a University
education at Athens, where he had fallen under the spell of
Brutus, for whom he fought at Philippi. He was, and remained,
a Republican by instinct, but Maecenas won him over to the
cause of Caesarism. He made his reputation with the Satires,
a species of composition which may be termed truly Italian.
The satire is a conversational medley written in the language
of prose with the rhythm of poetry. In this Horace was
imitating the old Roman master Lucilius. It is much to the
credit of his critical discernment that Maecenas was able to
descry the brilliant abilities of Horace in this very uninspiring
medium. For though his Satires were sometimes bitterly
satirical in the modern sense of the word, Horace's chief literary
asset was the charm of a sunny, genial character. He had in
addition a gift for composition and an industry which brought
him almost but not quite to the level of original genius. It
seems to have been Maecenas who set him to the writing of
lyrical odes. Biting satires might have been the most effective
literary weapon in republican days, but the glorification of the
new regime required something of a loftier strain. Vergil was
engaged upon its epic, Horace was instructed to write its
occasional verse. The Greek lyrists of the older period had
as yet remained unimitated in Latin. Accordingly just as
when the young Vergil had wanted to sing of kings and
battles " Apollo had plucked his ear and admonished him that
a shepherd should feed fatjsheep and sing a slender song," so
Horace was deliberately set down to the task of celebrating the
new Rome in the style of Sappho and Alcaeus and Anacreon.
That he accomplished his task so superbly is a proof of his
237
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
energy and versatility. He himself, a gentle valetudinarian
whose idea of a banquet was a mess of cabbage and pot-herbs,
had to strike the lyre of revelry and sing of wine and love.
He sang without conviction, without a spark of Sapphic fire or
a note of natural music, but the noble rhetoric of the Roman
schools in the golden age supported him. He laboured for the
right word never in vain. No writer has ever equalled his
matchless gift for making truisms sound true. No other
writer has been able to assert that " it is sweet and comely to
die for the fatherland," or that " life is short " with an equal
air of genuine wisdom. Latin with its terse precision is the
ideal language for the expression of platitudes. His patriotic
eloquence is Roman rhetoric of the best kind. But perhaps
his real strength lies in drama. It is strange that Latin of the
classical period failed at producing a native drama so completely
as it did. Perhaps it was because the writers of that age were
so completely under Greek influences that their natural Italian
genius for the theatre was stifled under the load of a classical
convention. Certainly Horace had the gift, and in such passages
as the dramatic duologue (Ode ix. of Book III.) Donee gratiis
eram tibi, or the Epode of the witches (v.) At, o deortim, or the
still more famous Epistle about the bore, he exhibits himself,
like Browning, as a dramatist gone astray. Regarded from
the purely lyrical point of view, the Century Hymn, which he
wrote to order as Rome's laureate in succession to Vergil, is
perhaps his greatest achievement. The Secular Games of
17 B.C. were intended to bring visibly before men's eyes the
glories of the new monarchy and incidentally to carry in their
train the salutary but unpopular measures of the Julian moral
reform. So the choir of noble youths and maidens were taught
to sing in their prayer to Diana:
diua, producas subolem patrumque
prosperes decreta super iugandis
feminis prolisque nouae feraci
lege marita,*
* Carmen Seculare, 17-20.
238
PLATE LXIII. BA'ALBEK: THE CIRCULAR TEMPLE
AUGUSTAN ROME
where the goddess is besought to increase the population of
Rome and favour the senate's decrees about marriage. The
fourth book of the Odes was added after a long interval at the
direct request of Augustus. It is intended to bring the
achievements of Augustus and his family, particularly the
triumphs of Tiberius and Drusus, into favourable comparison
with the heroic stories of republican history. It is most
melancholy to observe that Maecenas, to whom Horace was
genuinely attached and whose name constantly occurs in his
earlier writings, here drops out of the poet's verse because he
had fallen out of Caesar's favour.
Although Horace is in his Odes as classical and conventional
as all the Roman writers of his age, his Satires and Epistles
are more intimate than any other Latin work of the great period.
In them we get real glimpses of life at Rome, or on a country
estate. We cannot fail to be struck with its idleness and
emptiness. In the city he saunters from the forum to the baths,
from the baths to the dinner-table with time and boredom for
his only enemies. In the country he sometimes, it is true, toys
with husbandry, or shows a faint interest in landscape-gardening
or loiters among his books, but the life is to the last degree
super-civilised and unreal. The very ideas of hope and
progress were alien to the ancient world. The eyes of the
Romans were always turned behind them, so that they could
not see the greatness of the vista that was now opening for
them in front.
The elegists — such as the graceful melancholy Tibullus, or
Propertius, the pedant who often stumbled into poetry, and a
host of others who are mere names to us — would hardly, but
for their prominence in the schoolroom, deserve serious
attention. Callimachus the Alexandrian was their model,
himself scarcely a first-rate poet. The whole idea of writing
love poetry in an absolutely regular distich of hexameter and
pentameter was inartistic and unreal. Their fluent prolixity
makes them insufferably tedious out of school. It is difficult
to sustain interest in the relations between the bards and the
239
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
married ladies with Greek pseudonyms to whom their verses
are addressed. From our point of view the chief interest in
these writers lies in the fact that nearly all of them were at one
time or another invited to praise the new regime. Tibullus,
indeed, who enjoyed a modest competence of his own, limits
his praises to his immediate patron Messalla, and frankly
admits that war and battles disgust him. But Propertius
makes an attempt to carry out his commission, and describes
the battle of Actium fifteen years after its occurrence. But
though he invites Bacchus to assist his Muse, it is wretched
stuff and the poet himself turns from it with disgust. The
famous elegy upon Cornelia, daughter of the injured Scribonia,
beginning desine, Paulle, meum lacrimis urgere sepulcrum, is
however sufficient proof that it was only the want of a really
inspiring theme and a suitable medium which prevented
Propertius from being in the front rank of the world's poets.
Ovid, " this incorrigibly immoral but inexpressibly graceful
poet" as Mr. Cruttwell called him, is a far more interesting
personality. I think he may fairly be called the wickedest
writer on the world's bookshelves. Others may be wicked
through ignorance, or by accident, or out of high animal spirits,
but Ovid is immoral on principle, a conscientious and industrious
perverter. His greatest work, "The Art of Loving," is quite
frankly a guide to adultery, the precepts it contains being
perfectly practical and evidently based on expert knowledge.
In his Amores, Metamorphoses, and Fasti he took for his field
the domain of religion and exhibited celestial sin in the most
captivating light. We have already seen how the loves of
the gods came to take their place in the Olympian mythology,
and how thinking pagans like Plato regarded them. To such
men they were already relics of barbarism, but Ovid draws
them out into the light again, gilds them with his wit and
makes them altogether charming for the Roman drawing-room.
The strange and uncouth old ritual of Italian nature-worship
is piquantly dressed out for the up-to-date blasphemer. No-
body who had read Ovid could possibly worship Jupiter any
240
p. Mo A
O
H
>
I
<
o
M
a
H
<
•-«|s .
ilg
•
AUGUSTAN ROME
more. It was all done with consummate art and unblushing
impudence. When the sad Niobe is bereft of her seven fair
children by the arrows of the jealous gods, our poet, ingeniously
parodying Vergil, observes :
heu quantum haec Niobe, Niobe distabat ab ilia.
In telling the dreadful tragedy whereby the Greeks had ex-
plained the sorrow of Philomela, the nightingale, our poet
cheerfully describes the slaughter of the children, adding :
pars inde cauis exultat aenis,
pars ueribus stridunt.
And so he moves from one lovely myth to another, preserving
them indeed for our archaeologists, but delicately with the
breath of his profanity defiling them for ever.
Now Ovid is far more typical of the civilisation of his day
than either Vergil or Horace. For Ovid was a Roman noble,
rich and gifted, who in earlier days would have passed
creditably from one high office to another in the state, humorously
plundering a province or two, gracefully collecting objects of
art in Asia and possibly losing a battle or two through
negligence. He actually started on a public career as a
brilliant barrister, and enjoyed the ancient office of decemvir
stlitibus iudicandis, something like our Masters in Chancery.
But the Roman drawing-rooms soon swallowed him up in their
silken entanglements, and he spent the greater part of his life
whispering his poisonous little pentameters to ladies like Julia.
Of course a single poet with Ovid's sinister gifts was doing
far more to corrupt Rome than all the Julian legislation could
do to reform it, and we may fairly conclude that Ovid with his
attacks on the traditional Roman morality and religion, together
with effeminate bards like Tibullus who sang of the horrors of
war, were more than undoing the patriotic work of Vergil and
Horace. The plain fact is that though you may hire writers
you cannot purchase the spirit of a people, and so Augustus
and Maecenas found, to the great misfortune of the Roman
Empire. They failed in their attempt to capture literature.
Q 241
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Oppression failed even more signally than corruption. Hence-
forth all the literary talent of Rome is on the opposition side.
Lucan extols republicanism, Tacitus assails the emperors with
satirical history, Petronius pillories Nero with satirical romance,
Juvenal with satirical poetry. Only the younger Pliny is loyal,
and to be praised by Pliny is a very doubtful recommendation.
Roman literature had imbibed the republican ideals from its
Greek foster-mother. The schoolmasters of Rome continued
to teach their pupils to declaim against tyrants.
But Ovid himself was not permitted to flourish in his
wickedness. A sudden decree from Caesar Augustus fell upon
him like a thunderbolt. He was banished for ever and bidden
to betake himself to Tomi, on the Black Sea, near the mouth
of the Danube. From that inhospitable region he continued to
pour forth elegiacs, Epistles and Tristia, wherein he protests
his innocence, recants anything and everything he has ever
said, and bewails the horrors of arctic existence among the
barbarians. The actual cause of his banishment is one of the
most piquant mysteries in literary history. He has seen some-
thing which he ought not to have seen : his eyes have destroyed
him. It is fairly clear that his banishment synchronised with
the banishment of the younger Julia, and we may well believe
that the old emperor, shocked and horrified by this second
scandal in his own house, attributed it to the corrupting in-
fluence of that singer of gilded sins. The banishment was
certainly well merited and the only pity is that it came too late
to effect its purpose. The unmanly tone of the Tristia, the
effeminate appeals to everybody in Rome including a hitherto
forgotten wife, reveal Ovid in his true character. It is a little
strange that generations of British youth have been trained not
only in the study but even in the imitation of this author.
When we term the Golden Age of Roman literature
"Augustan" we ought to remember that it began long before
Augustus and ended before his death. Thus with all his
patronage he may more justly be called the finisher than the
author of it. Of all the great writers, only Ovid, to whom the
242
AUGUSTAN ROME
simple life and bracing air of the Sarmatians afforded an unusual
longevity, outlived Augustus. Summing up the characteristics
of the literature of this day, we may say that courtliness and
artificiality were its most prominent characteristics. The
freshness of Catullus, the stern conviction of Lucretius, the fire
of Cicero were extinct. Nearly all that was native in Roman
letters had perished ; only the crispness of epigram, the bite of
satire and the dignified music of the language itself remained
as the Italian heritage. Greece had quite definitely triumphed
over Rome. Technical excellence continued, for this has
always been the mark of " Augustan " periods. But the well-
meant efforts of the state to capture literature for its own
service had failed. The horrors of the civil war outweighed
the glories of the new regime and with all his benevolence the
emperor could never outlive the memory of his proscriptions.
Literature never forgave the murder of Cicero though the
author of Thyestes might be loaded with treasure. Indeed the
widespread misery of those terrible days in 40 B.C. came home
personally to most of our middle-class writers. Vergil, Horace,
Tibullus, and Propertius had each and all received ineffaceable
memories in the loss of their patrimonies. It was little wonder
that even though they sang of wars and victories when
"Cynthius plucked their ear" their natural instinct was to
compare Mars and Venus very much to the disadvantage of
the former.
When we turn to consider the Art of the period, we must
not forget to carry with us the light that we have obtained
from the study of its literature. For Augustus and his assist-
ants were attempting precisely similar ends in both regions.
With temples, baths, circuses, amphitheatres, colonnades,
libraries, and statues the new regime was to flourish its magni-
ficence in the eyes of the world and, above all, to dazzle the
citizens of Rome, fill up the emptiness of their lives, and make
them forget, if it were possible, the magnitude of their loss.
Money was lavished upon this object by the emperor and all his
friends, and the building activity which transformed Rome
243
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
from a city of brick into a city of marble must have given
work and pay to vast numbers of the poor. But the magnifi-
cence has all perished, as all magnificence must, and it is left
for us by the study of a few ruined monuments, a few statues
and busts, an altar here, a cornice there, to estimate the spirit
of Rome in conformity with its literature.
Roman art supplied much of their inspiration to the artists
of the Renaissance. Michael Angelo and Raphael learnt their
art by copying the antiquities, and much of the Renaissance
architecture was direct imitation of the Augustan age. But
with the birth of archaeology as a science in the nineteenth
century, scholars became accustomed to leap straight over the
Roman era, or to regard it merely as a phase of the Hellenistic
decline. From that view, undoubtedly erroneous and unjust,
there has latterly been an attempt to escape. Wickhoff and
Riegl, whose foremost interpreter in this country is Mrs.
Strong, have argued that Roman art has an existence per se,
not only possessing characteristic excellences of its own, but in
many points transcending the limits of Greek art. To such
pioneers we owe a deep debt of gratitude. They have undoubtedly
drawn our attention to real merits and real steps of progress in
the art of the Romans. But on the whole they have failed,
as it seems to an onlooker, to prove their case. Partly it is in
the long run a question of taste. A convinced Romanist like
Mrs. Strong displays for our admiration many works of art
which trained eyes, accustomed to Greek and modern art,
often refuse to admire. I would take as an instance the well-
known " Tellus Group," a slab from the Augustan Altar of
Peace,* preserved in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence. To me it
seems a laborious composition, executed with care and skill,
but wholly without inspiration or imagination. It is purely
conventional allegory. How would the designer of an illu-
minated ticket for an agricultural exhibition depict Mother
Earth ? He would design a group (would he not ?) with a tall
and richly bosomed lady for his central figure, he would put
* Plate 36.
244
Abeniacar
PLATE LXVI. POMPEII : MURAL PAINTING, STREET OF ABUNDANCE
AUGUSTAN ROME
two naked babes upon her lap, at her feet would be a cow
and a sheep, while the background would be filled with flowers
and trees. The cornucopia would occupy a prominent position.
If he were asked to fill his space with additional figures,
he would throw in Air and Water, one on each side, designed
on the same plan. There would be little motive in the group,
little connection between the figures. The designer's aim
would be that the spectator in a casual glance might observe
the fitness of it all — Earth sitting between Air and Water —
note it, and pass on. This is just what the Roman artist has
done. He has earned his money. He has carved most skil-
fully and diligently, he has introduced all the conventional
emblems. He has drawn his metaphor from stock. I cannot
see that he has put any love or religion or indeed faith of any
kind into his work. The only thing my eye cares to dwell
upon is the absurdity of Air, who is riding (backwards) on a
wholly inadequate swan, pretending to form one of a group with
the immovably seated Earth. This then is the first point of criti-
cism against the Romanists. I have put it as a mere subjective
impression, which involves simply a question of taste. But in
reality it is more. They are failing or have failed to make
out their case, chiefly because the critical world of art-lovers
declines to follow their expressions of enthusiasm, and can
give reasons for its refusal.
Secondly, we have a right to ask the apostles of Roman art
what they mean by their claims. How justly may we call
works like the Altar of Peace,* or even the Column of Trajan,
"Roman Art"? Was any of it executed by Roman artists ?
We have just read the true Roman attitude towards art in
Vergil's scornful excudent alii. We may be sure that the
Altar of Peace was executed by Greeks. The only named
sculptors of the period are Greeks. This is indeed admitted,
but then the Roman claim takes one of two forms, (i) that
work executed in the Roman Empire may be called Roman,
which is absurd, or (2) that apart from mere execution there
* Plate 35, Fig. z; Plate 37 ; and Plate 41, Fig. z.
245
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
are in the work certain characteristic innovations which are due
to Roman inspiration. The latter claim is true, to some extent,
and important.
Just as Maecenas "plucked the ear" of the poets, and
instructed them when to sing or when to refrain from singing
of kings and battles, so the patron of art gave instructions to
the Greek artists. It is clear enough what instructions he gave.
Like Cromwell he cried "Paint me as I am, warts and all.
Leave your idealism, your perfect profiles, your serene gods in
the tranquillity of Olympus, and depict men with the living
emotions displayed in frown and wrinkle." That was excellent
advice, no doubt, but he seems to have gone further. He
seems, like the good Dr. Primrose, to have demanded value
for his money by insisting upon so many portraits to the square
yard of surface to be decorated. Is not this the explanation
of the crowded figures in the new style of relief work, as exhi-
bited at Rome from the Altar of Peace to the Column of
Trajan? In the friezes of the Mausoleum, the fourth-century
Greek sculptors had discovered the advantage of free spacing
so that each figure has a value of its own. The florid taste of
the millionaire Attalids of Pergamum had made a reactionary
movement in the direction of crowded and tangled forms.
Now these Roman friezes carry the demand a stage further. In
these processions we have a compact mass of faces, each
admirably and no doubt faithfully portrayed, but ruining by
their very numbers the artistic success of the whole. The
spectator is not to admire a composition. As in Frith's
"Derby Day" he is to pick out a face here and there and cry
"That is Agrippa: that is Messalla : that is Germanicus." In
its essence such a demand is not the mark of a people with any
sense of art. On the contrary it is the measure of their crudity
and Philistinism. Nevertheless this new demand enabled
the versatile Greek genius to win for itself fresh triumphs,
especially in realistic portraiture and narrative relief-work.
Part of the claim which Wickhoff and his followers make
for the originality of Roman art is based upon the belief that
246
t. A
AUGUSTAN ROME
the limitations of Greek art are not self-imposed ; for example,
that the Greeks did not know how to express emotion in the
plastic arts, that they could not make realistic portraits, that
through ignorance they never perceived the beauty of a stark
corpse, that Pheidias lacked the intelligence to find a dramatic
centre for the Parthenon frieze, and so forth. Such assumptions
as these are easily disproved. Greeks were capable of realism
(witness the Ludovisi reliefs *) but they preferred to idealise.
In portraying giants, barbarians, or slaves they could express
transient emotions, but for Greeks and gods in statuary they
deliberately preferred serenity. The Greeks sought to conceal
their art rather than to display it, as we have learnt from the
discovery of the subtle secrets of their architecture, and it is
rash to assert of any principle of craftsmanship that the Greeks
did not know it. Many of the claims of Rome to originality
may be refuted by this consideration.
What I believe to be the true statement of the case
is this : Greek art did not come to an end with the death of
Praxiteles or the Roman conquest. Its central impulse passed
over from the impoverished mainland to the still flourishing
communities of the East, to Antioch on the Maeander where
the Aphrodite of Melos was produced, to Rhodes where the
Laocoon was carved, to Ephesus, and farther east still, even
into Parthia and possibly India. It was by no means stereo-
typed but still producing new forms to meet fresh demands,
as for sarcophagi in Sidon, or for paintings and mosaics in
Egypt. In the course of this period the art of the Greeks
was much influenced by the East. The Romans at first were
content to take Greek art as they found it. In the days of
Mummius they were merely like rich transatlantic collectors
in search of beautiful, still more of precious and unique, com-
modities. They had no doubt some slaves of their own working
in Rome at the arts and crafts. Some of these would be Greeks
of inferior birth and capacity reproducing old Greek work for
the Roman market. But some of them may well have been
* See "The Glory that was Greece," Plates 31 and 32.
247
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Italians, some Etruscans preserving the old artistic traditions
of their race. This " collecting " era lasted down to the time
of Augustus. We have seen it as late as Cicero and Atticus.
There was little demand for new creations in those days. Few
temples were being built. The artists were still scattered about
the Levant. There was little to attract them to Rome.
But when Augustus decided to build a new Rome of
marble, founding or restoring his eighty temples, with arches
and theatres innumerable all over the Empire, there must have
been a great influx of artists from Greece and Asia Minor.
Now begins an art to which we may fairly apply the term
Grseco-Roman in the sense that it was the work of Greek
artists under oriental influences supplying Roman demands.
The new demands entailed still further artistic developments ;
some of them, but not all, to be regarded by those who view the
history of art as a whole, as improvements. One main effect
of Roman conditions was that art largely ceased its service
of religion and became devoted to secular purposes. Thus the
limitations of the best Greek art, self-imposed as they were,
now broke down. The effect is seen especially in portraiture,
where the Romans had a tradition of realism resulting from
the use of the death-mask in making wax images of the
illustrious deceased. Hence in the decoration of the great Altar
of Peace at Rome, the Greek artists, who would naturally have
produced a frieze of gods or idealised worshippers, were asked
for portraits of the men of the day. I think it is clear that
enormous skill was devoted to the likenesses of men and very
little care to the gods. The composition of the whole was
of little account. A little later the demand for historical
reliefs on arches and columns was met by the development of
quite new features in the art of sculpture, namely, those spatial
or tridimensional effects of perspective which are so remark-
able on the Trajan column.* This art seems to have begun in
Alexandrian times but Rome may claim the credit for its
development. It was necessary, if sculpture was to do that
* Plate 73: for detail see Plates 53, 54, 55, 56.
248
AUGUSTAN ROME
for which it was surely never intended — to tell a story. The
Parthenon frieze was religious ornament, the Trajan column
is secular history. When the Romans required ornament they
were content with decoration merely and the artists complied
with the wonderful skill which they had probably learnt in
Asia. Never have there been such exquisite natural designs in
wreaths and festoons of flowers and fruit as in the sculpture of
the Augustan age.* It is the same with the art of the gold-
smith, as we see in the wonderful discoveries of silver made
at Hildesheim and Bosco Reale f or in the great imperial
cameos wrought in sardonyx. J There was money and skill
in plenty. But what was lacking was a spirit to animate it.
If we could be sure of our ground in setting down realism
as the Roman contribution to the history of Art, it would be
a great achievement for Rome. Realism is undoubtedly a fine
thing though idealism is a finer. Unfortunately it seems that
Hellenic art in the eastern centres was developing realism, or
at least illusionism, for itself on its own soil. On the whole,
in the controversy between the archaeologists, Strzygowski, who
claims the East as the inspiring force in Roman days, seems to
have the best of it. The coins of Asia Minor present realistic
portraiture quite distinct from that which was native on Roman
soil. Thus the exquisite festoons of flowers, fruit, and birds, all
botanically and anatomically correct to the last feather or stamen,
are probably the product of Greece and the East. But we may
well believe that the nature of the Roman patron's demands
assisted this movement. The Roman, if we may judge by Pliny
the Roman art-critic, was just the man to insist that an apple
should not resemble a pear or to count the petals of a poppy. This
sort of criticism affords excellent discipline for the artist. The
statues of the period, such as the Venus Genetrix by Arcesilaus
in the Louvre § and the Orestes and Electra group by Stephanus
at Naples, are not very interesting works. They are plainly
late-born issues of Greek sculpture, though in the latter there
* Plate 41, Fig. 2 ; Plate 42, Fig. i ; and Plate 43.
t Plate 38. | Plates 39, 40. § Plate 18, Fig. i.
249
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
is an attempt at expression which seems to be derived from
the influence of portraiture. The " Electra," for example, has
the same look in her eyes, a frowning look as of one standing
in strong sunlight, that we see in the portrait of Agrippa.
Portraiture had taught the sculptor of this day new secrets
about the setting of the human eye. They had learnt the effect
produced by deepening the hollow under the brow and by
making the direction of the glance diverge from that of the
head and body. But much of this was a legacy from Scopas.
In little things like the hang of Electra's robe there is visible
degeneration. Here, as in the Tellus Group, the contour of
the bosom is made to support the falling drapery, an unnatural
and very unpleasing effect.
The architecture of the period is distinguished by similar
characteristics. It is distinctly Greece-Roman with much of
—'the subtle harmony of fine Greek work lost. The temples are,
on the whole, the least interesting part of the work, for they are
pale copies of Greek architecture not always very artistically
adapted. A good many of the ruined monuments of Rome to
which the pious traveller now directs his footsteps date from
the Augustan period. Many of the temples of the Republic
were now rebuilt on the old plan with more sumptuous materials,
as, for example, the round shrine of Mater Matuta,* commonly
called the Temple of Hercules. Technical innovations include
the debasement of the Doric column by omitting those subtle
flutings which gave it all the grace whereby its strength was
saved from clumsiness, and by erecting it upon a pedestal.
But the Romans preferred the more exuberant Corinthian order
with its florid capital of acanthus foliage, a type which the
Greeks had used very sparingly and seldom externally. Again,
the Romans had discovered improved methods of construction
which enabled them to use a wider span in roofing, but they
made no artistic advantage out of this fact. On the contrary,
by dispensing with the peristyle or surrounding colonnade they
rendered the exterior of their temples much less interesting.
* Plate 44, Fig. 2.
250
AUGUSTAN ROME
The principal surviving 'relics of Augustan temples are eight
columns of the Temple of Saturn * which still stand in the Forum
at Rome. The celebrated Pantheon f is now recognised to be
a work of Hadrian's time though its plan probably repeats that
of the temple erected on the site by Agrippa. But the clearest
picture of the ecclesiastical architecture of the day is to be
seen on the reliefs of the Altar of Peace, which reproduce the
appearance of actual temples with almost photographic exacti-
tude. The finest extant example is undoubtedly the temple at
Nismes, known as the Maison Carrde,J a graceful erection of
this period which exhibits the Corinthian style without undue
extravagance.
As the Romans of this day had scarcely any trace of
genuine religious feeling it is not surprising that they had little
of their own to contribute to temple architecture except wealth
and magnificence. But they were naturally devoted to building
and that was the favourite extravagance of the rich. Nothing
but a few pavements survives of all the handsome villas which
dotted the hill-sides at Tibur and Praeneste, or lined the coast
at Baiae, Naples, and Surrentum. But there are several
secular buildings of Augustan date in which we can see a
handsome Graeco-Roman style of architecture wherein Greek
columns and entablatures were used by Roman architects chiefly
as ornament. The Theatre of Marcellus,§ built in 1 3 B.C., still
presents considerable remains, which though much defaced
exhibit an appearance of bygone splendour. The lower story
is Doric, the second is Ionic, and the third which has perished
was probably in the Corinthian style. We may judge its
effective appearance from the copy of its elevation which
Michael Angelo produced in his design for the inner court of
the Farnese Palace at Rome.|| The Renaissance learnt much of
its architecture from Augustan Rome and these very designs
may be seen springing up around us to-day in the banks and
town-halls of London. Thus Augustan Rome holds a
* Plate 44, Fig. i. f Plate 45. J Plate 46.
§ Plate 47. || plate 48.
251
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
supremacy for secular building even greater than Periclean
Athens achieved for temples. Where magnificence and solidity
— and it may be added cheapness — are the principal motives of
construction, the Graeco-Roman style of the First Century B.C.
is unmatched.
The most gorgeous of the architectural creations of
Augustus was, however, that Temple of Mars the Avenger
which he set up in memory of his triumph over Antony and
his punishment of the conspirators. Round it was a piazza.
(forum) adorned with imaginary portrait statues of all the
Roman heroes of history with biographical inscriptions on the
bases. In all the Augustan culture we see the impress of the
prince's own Graeco-Roman taste. It was all planned to
achieve his object of dazzling the multitude and yet gaining
over to his side the highest intellect and taste of his day. His
own tastes were refined and fastidious : he hated extravagance
and utility was always before his eyes. " He read the classics
in both tongues " says Suetonius, " principally in order to find
salutary precepts and examples for public and private life. He
would copy these out word for word and send them to his
servants or to the governors of armies and provinces or to the
magistrates of the city whenever they required his admoni-
tions. He used to read whole volumes to the Senate, and
often publish them in an edict." We learn further that he
always prepared his more important orations most carefully,
writing them down and keeping the manuscript close at hand.
This practice he followed even in his discourse with his wife.
Augustan culture has just this quality : it takes immense pains
and succeeds by virtue of them. It lacks a good deal in
spontaneity but it makes up in excellence of technique.
252
FIG. I. WARRIORS
FIG. 2. APOTHEOSIS OF ANTONINUS AND FAUSTINA
PLATE LXIX. RELIEFS FROM THE RASE OF THE ANTONINE COLUMN
VI
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
Ambitionem scriptoris facile auerseris, obtrectatio et liuor
pronis auribus accipiuntur : quippe adulationi fcedum crimen
seruitutis, malignitati falsa species libertatis inest. — TACITUS.
N these words, pregnant and terse as ever, Tacitus
gives us a key to the true reading of imperial Roman
history. " It is easy," he says, "to discount the self-
interest of the historian and to reject his eulogies, but
his malicious criticisms are greedily swallowed. For
flattery bears the odious stamp of servility, while
malignity wears the false disguise of independence."
Thus out of his own mouth the foremost historian of
the early Empire gives us the right to read the
literary sources in a spirit favourable to the emperors.
So when the historians describe Tiberius as a blood-
thirsty tyrant who hid himself away in the island of
Capri, and there (at the age of seventy!) began to
devote himself to disgusting orgies of lust and cruelty,
we shall prefer to reject that story as absurd, and to
regard Tiberius as a proud and reserved aristocrat who found
it impossible to tolerate the mixture of adulation and spite
with which he was treated by the other nobles of Rome, and
withdrew from the capital in order to escape it. When
Gaius (Caligula) is represented as a lunatic, we merely under-
stand that he was unpopular ; when we are told that he made
his horse a consul, we recognise a satirist's humorous exaggera-
tion of his neglect of some noble family's claims to that office ;
253
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
when we read that he set his army to collect oyster shells on
the coast of Normandy, we only conclude that his surrender of
the projected invasion of Britain was a subject of ridicule in
Rome. Claudius is described as a stupid and clumsy pedant,
deformed and inarticulate : in reality he seems to have been a
scholar with a leaning towards antiquarian and republican
traditions. Even in the case of Nero, the savage ferocity with
which he is charged is chiefly due to the fact that his hand lay
heavy on the senators. He was undoubtedly popular with the
commons, and his real offence was to possess more refine-
ment and culture than was considered proper in a Roman
noble, to be too fond of Greeks and art and music. Never-
theless it is impossible to write history in whitewash, and
the only safe method of dealing with a period like this is
to ignore the personalities on the throne of the Caesars, and
to attempt a broad treatment of the general tendency of these
times.
But by neglecting the gossip and the personalities we do,
I fear, run the risk of missing much of the interest of the
period, and perhaps we lose an important part of the truth.
We must not allow ourselves to be wholly deprived of that im-
pression of purple and splendour which hangs about the Golden
House of Nero, nor to forget the taint of crime which clings to
the palaces of the Caesars. The latter in particular is an
essential part of imperial history. As we have seen, this
Empire founded on compromise was and remained illegitimate.
The succession was always open to question ; there was no law
of heredity. This fact was emphasised by the barrenness of
the Roman aristocracy. For a hundred years no prince had
a son to succeed him, so that the palace was always full of
intrigue. Finally, the wickedness of the women is one of the
most sinister features of the time. Though it was, indeed, no
innovation of the Empire, it now gains a terrible significance
in the dynastic conflicts which surrounded the throne. Every
one of the early reigns is stained with murders and fearful
crimes in the palace. No doubt much of this history is false
254
A
PLATE LXX. TWO VIEWS OF THE AQUEDUCT OF CLAUDIUS
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
and malicious. For example, it is by no means likely that
Germanicus was poisoned. There were always scandal-mongers
to hint at poison when any member of the ruling house died of
disease. But even with the most liberal discount for exaggera-
tion, the record is a black one. Let us select two typical
stories, in order to suggest the kind of satanic halo which
surrounds the imperial houses, as the ancient historians depict
them.
Claudius, the conqueror of Britain, was in reality the ablest
and best of the Claudian Caesars who succeeded Augustus, but
his wife Messalina, thirty-four years his junior, was a creature
of shameless lust and remorseless cruelty. Valerius Asiaticus,
a Gaul by birth but now the richest noble of his day, was in
possession of the far-famed gardens of Lucullus. Messalina
coveted the park and accused him to her husband, with the
inevitable result. Asiaticus died like a gentleman. He took
his usual exercise, he bathed and dined quite cheerfully, and
then he opened his veins, "but not until he had inspected his
funeral pyre and ordered its removal to another place, for fear
that the smoke should injure the thick foliage of the trees."
So died this lover of gardens. Messalina's sins grew more
open, until at last she went through a public pantomime of
marriage with one of her paramours, Silius, a consul-elect.
The ceremony was performed before a number of witnesses duly
invited. Claudius was at that time guided by the counsels of
three Greek secretaries, and one of them determined to reveal
the shameful truth to the emperor. Tacitus tells the story of
her ruin in graphic language. She was celebrating the vintage
feast in the gardens she had wickedly gained for herself. The
presses were being trodden, the vats were overflowing, women
girt with skins were dancing, as Bacchanals dance in their
worship or their frenzy. Messalina with flowing hair shook
the thyrsus, and Silius, at her side, crowned with ivy and
wearing the buskin, moved his head in time with some lascivious
chorus. One of the guests had climbed a tree in sport and
reported a " hurricane from Ostia." It was truer than he knew,
255
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
for just then messengers began to arrive with news that Claudius
was on his way from Ostia, coming with vengeance. The
revels ceased, the revellers fled in all directions, and Messalina,
left deserted, mounted a garden cart to proceed along the road to
meet her husband. Her appeal failed, though Claudius would
undoubtedly have relented but for the interference of the freed-
man Narcissus. After dinner, warmed with the wine, he bade
some one go and tell " that poor creature " to come before him
on the morrow to plead her cause. But Narcissus had already
sent soldiers to her, and she was driven to suicide. " Claudius
was still at the banquet when they told him that Messalina was
dead, without mentioning whether it was by her own or another's
hand. Nor did he ask the question, but called for his cup and
finished the repast as usual."
Nero, too, in the pages of Suetonius appears so incredible
in his wickedness that the exaggeration is obvious. Of his
splendid new palace the Golden House we read : " The
portico was so high that it could contain a colossal statue of
himself a hundred and twenty feet in height ; and the space it
included was so vast that it had a triple colonnade, a mile in
length, and a lake like a sea, surrounded with buildings that
looked like a city. It had a park with cornfields, vineyards,
pastures, and woods containing a vast number of animals of all
kinds, wild and tame. Parts of it were entirely overlaid with
gold, and incrusted with jewels and pearl. The supper-rooms
were vaulted and the compartments of the ceilings, which were
inlaid with ivory, were made to revolve and scatter flowers.
They also contained pipes to shed scents upon the guests. The
chief banqueting-room was circular and revolved perpetually
day and night, according to the motion of the celestial bodies.
The baths were supplied with water from the sea and the
Albula." At the dedication of this magnificent building, all
that he said in praise of it was : " Now at last I have begun to
live like a gentleman." They charged Nero with the murder
of all his relatives, and there is a grim sort of humour in the
story of his frequent attempts upon his mother's life. His
256
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
grievance against her was that she was too strict. First, he
deprived her of her bodyguard, and suborned people to harass
her with lawsuits which drove her out of the city. In her
retirement he set others to follow her about by land and sea
with abuse and scurrilous language. Three times he attempted
her life by poison, but finding she had previously rendered
herself immune by the use of antidotes, he next designed
machinery to make the floor above her bed-chamber collapse
while she was asleep. When this failed he constructed a
special coffin-ship, which could be made to fall in pieces, and
then sent her a loving invitation to visit him at Baise, the
Brighton of the Romans. The ships of her escort were like-
wise instructed to ram her by accident on the way home. He
attended her to the vessel in a very cheerful spirit and kissed
her bosom at parting with her. After which he sat up late at
night waiting with great anxiety for the joyful news of her
decease. But news arrived that the accident had miscarried,
the dowager empress was swimming to shore. When her
freedman came joyfully to narrate her escape, Nero pretended
that the man had come to assassinate him and ordered her to
be put to death. Suetonius adds " on good authority " that he
went to view her corpse and criticised her blemishes to his
followers, and then called for drink. After this he was haunted
by her ghost.
The famous story of his death is told with a little restraint,
and the latter part of it is not incredible. When the first bad
news came of the revolt of Vindex with the legions of Gaul,
Nero summoned his privy council and held a hasty consultation
with them about the crisis, but spent the rest of the day in
showing them a hydraulic organ and discoursing upon the
intricacies of the invention. Then he composed a skit upon
the rebels, and prepared a pathetic speech which was to make
the mutineers return to his allegiance in tears. He sat down
to compose the songs of triumph which should be sung upon
that occasion. In preparing his expedition his first thought
was to provide carriages for the band: he equipped all his
R 257
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
concubines as Amazons with battle-axes and bucklers. But
when he heard of the revolt of the Spanish army under Galba
also, he fell into a temper and tore the dispatch to pieces. He
broke his precious cups and put up a dose of Locusta's poison
in a golden box. He ordered the praetorian guard to rally
round him, but they only quoted Vergil to him :
" Is death indeed so hard a lot ? "
At midnight he awoke and found that the guards had deserted
his bedside. Even his bedding and his golden box of poison
had been stolen. So he stumbled out into the night as if he
would throw himself into the Tiber. But a few faithful slaves
came to him and a freedman offered him his country villa for
a refuge, and Nero rode thither in a shabby disguise. An
earthquake shook the ground and a flash of lightning darted
in his face ; he heard the soldiers in the praetorian camp shouting
for Galba. Skulking among bushes and briers, he crawled on
all fours to a wretched outhouse of his freedman's villa. There
he ordered them to dig a grave and line it with scraps of marble.
The water and wood for his obsequies were prepared, while he
uttered the famous words " qualis artifex pereol" either
meaning " What an artist the world is losing ! " or (more
probably) "What an artistic death!" A dispatch came to
announce that he had been declared a public enemy by the
senate, and was to be punished according to the ancient custom
of the Romans. He asked what sort of death that meant, and
was informed that the criminal was generally stripped naked
and scourged to death with his head in a pillory. Then he
took up daggers and tried the points, but still he dared not die.
He begged one of his attendants to give him the example. At
last he heard the horsemen coming, quoted a line of the Iliad
very appropriately, and drove, with the help of his secretary, a
dagger into his throat.
Now, even of this, three-quarters is pure rhetoric. For
example, it was impossible that Nero should have heard the
soldiers in the Esquiline Camp from the road which he took to
258
M
ft
X
X
I
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
his servant's villa. The details are the invention of malice,
or the attempt of a literary artist to improve his story. Even
Suetonius admits that the populace continued to deck Nero's
tomb with spring and summer flowers, that they dressed
up his image and placed it on the rostra as if he were
still alive, and that a pretender, who arose in his name
twenty years later, was received with acclamation among the
Parthians.
Having made this concession to the literary tradition which
can be shown to be very largely fiction, we may now endeavour
to gather up the fragments of history and briefly trace the
progress of the Empire during its first century. First, as to
its geographical growth; although Augustus had bequeathed
in his testament the advice not to enlarge the frontiers of the
Empire, and Tiberius had observed the precept, yet conquest
still remained an object of ambition in the heart of every
emperor who sought military renown or fresh sources of revenue.
Britain, the declined legacy of Julius, was obviously beckoning
the Romans. Diplomatic relations with the many kings of that
island had always been frequent, and it was found that Britain
was an inconvenient neighbour for a rapidly Romanising Gaul.
There was a continual coming and going across the water, for
there were kindred peoples on each side. Especially, it was the
last refuge of the anti-Roman force of Druidism, a religion
which was already declining and was suppressed by Claudius
in Gaul. That this was so is shown by the forward movement
of the Romans in the direction of Anglesey. The details of
the conquest of Britain are, in spite of voluminous discussions,
by no means certain. Aulus Plautius Silvanus with four legions,
and with the future emperor Vespasian as one of his brigadiers,
defeated Cymbeline and ten other kings of South Britain,
crossed the Thames and conquered Colchester (Camulodunum),
which became a Roman colonia and the centre of govern-
ment. This was in A.D. 43, and Claudius himself spent a
fortnight in our island in order to receive the honours of
victory. The conquest was not too easily achieved, for there
259
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
were five great battles in which the emperor, though absent,
received the titles of victory. Plautius himself seems to have
reached the line of the Trent and Severn. Ostorius Scapula,
his successor, was mainly occupied in subduing the Silures of
the Welsh mountains, and in the conquest of the elusive prince
Caradoc. The mercy shown to that defeated hero proves that
the Romans had advanced in humanity since the days of
Jugurtha. The two succeeding legates made no fresh advance,
but Suetonius Paulinus in A.D. 59-61 established Chester as his
western camp. While he was engaged in the conquest of
Anglesey, leaving only the ninth legion to hold the conquered
province, there broke out the great rebellion under the heroic
Boudicca. There never has been a quarrel in this island
which has not had money as its root. It was not so much the
oppressive nature of the tribute as the vexatious methods of the
Roman financiers, who still as in republican days swarmed in
the wake of eagles, that stirred the Iceni and their queen into
revolt. Camulodunum, Verulamium, and Londinium were
taken and sacked and there was an immense slaughter of
Roman civilians and Romanised Britons. But vengeance
followed: no barbarians could stand against the strategy and
discipline of the legions.
Succeeding governors were mainly content to pacify and
civilise the island.
One of the extraordinarily pungent chapters of Tacitus
shows us the Roman method of empire-building in Britain.
"The following winter," he says of A.D. 79, "was spent in
useful statecraft. To make a people which was scattered and
barbarous, and therefore prone to warfare, grow accustomed
to peace and quietness by way of their pleasures, Agricola
used to persuade them by private exhortations and public
assistance to build temples, forums, and houses, with praise
for the eager and admonitions for the laggard. Thus
they could not help embarking on the rivalry for honour.
Now he began to instruct the sons of chieftains in the liberal
arts, to xtol the natural abilities of the Britons above the
260
*-
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
studious habits of Gaul, so that those who lately rejected even
the Roman language now became zealous for oratory. So
even our dress came into esteem, and the toga was commonly
worn. The next step was towards the attractions of our vices,
lounging in colonnades, baths, and refined dinner-parties. They
were too ignorant to see that what they call civilisation was
really a form of slavery." There is no doubt that the Britons
took as readily as their Gallic cousins to the Roman civilisation.
Many of them took Roman names and became Roman citizens.
They learnt the pleasures of the bath and the amphitheatre,
their mines were exploited, arts and industries were introduced,
agriculture was improved. The Druids hid themselves away
in the unconquered fastnesses of Wales or crossed over to the
Hibernian island which the Romans never had leisure to
conquer. Meanwhile the Britons were learning to worship the
obsolete gods of Rome, and presently the Eastern deities who
came in their train.
It was the father-in-law of Tacitus, Julius Agricola, who
conquered, or at least defeated, the northern tribes of England.
Among the powerful Brigantes he established a garrison at
York (Eburacum), which eventually became the most important
of all the Roman centres. He advanced into Scotland also,
and inflicted a bloody defeat upon the wild Caledonians. But
Scotland remained unconquered, as did the neighbouring island
upon which also Agricola had cast his ambitious eyes. The
Roman army was wanted elsewhere, and the Emperor Domitian
declined to assist any further adventures. Little more of our
island's story is recorded until the travelling Emperor Hadrian
came out to visit us in A.D. 122. He saw that the wild north
was only to be won by a gradual advance with more or less
peaceful penetration northwards. The system of fortified
frontiers was already established on the Rhine and Danube,
and Hadrian drew his finger across the seventy miles between
Bowness and Wallsend. Across this space, where the Tyne and
Solway almost overlap, the Roman lines ran straight over hill
and dale, and there they are to this day as a silent proof of the
261
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
greatness of the Roman people.* This was more than a frontier :
it was a vast elongated camp which looked south as well as
north and frowned alike upon the Brigantes and the Caledonians.
It was pierced at intervals by fortified gates and great roads ran
northwards through it. On the north there was first a ditch,
and then a stone wall broad enough for two or three men to
walk abreast along it and nearly twenty feet high. Behind this,
in a space of about 140 yards wide, runs a road connect-
ing a chain of fourteen large camps, some of which grew into
towns. Southward again was the quadruple rampart of earth,
a mound, a dyke, and then a double mound. This immense
labour, though it is small in comparison with Roman works
elsewhere, was achieved not by British slaves, but by Roman
soldiers, some of whom were Britons, some Spaniards, and some
Germans. It was completed gradually under various emperors.
There were detached forts both north and south of the wall of
Hadrian. It was Antoninus Pius who made the next step
twenty years later. The Antonine wall from the Forth to the
Clyde is only about half as long and of inferior strength.
There were camps even north of this, in Stirlingshire for
example, and it is clear that the Romans intended to feel their
way into the Highlands. But that was contrary to their fates.
Gaul meanwhile was becoming as civilised as Italy herself.
Numbers of the Gauls who had acquired the Latin speech
received the jus Latinum, which was almost equivalent to full
citizenship. Claudius admitted the chiefs of the /Edui into the
Roman senate, and part of the speech in which he did so is
preserved on bronze tablets at Lyons. Twice in the course of
the century there were interesting attempts to give political ex-
pression to the Gallic sense of nationality. The revolt of
Vindex at the close of Nero's reign was little more than a
mutiny, but the projected " Empire of the Gauls," which was
set up during the confusion which followed the fall of Vitellius,
came very near success. Jealousy between the Gauls and
Germans wrecked it.
* Plate 51.
262
PLATE LXXIII. THE COLUMN OF TRAJAN
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
In the case of Germany, it looked for a time as if Tiberius,
who, of course, had personal knowledge of the difficulties and
advantages of further conquest, meant to break his stepfather's
precept and annex more territory. But probably the annual
expeditions of Germanicus were not intended to be more than
punitive and demonstrative. Blood enough was shed, and
acres enough laid waste, to appease the unburied ghosts of
Varus and his legions. But though the great battle of
Idistavisus was hailed as a Roman victory, Arminius himself
continually eluded the Romans and the legions were more than
once in peril of ambush. When Tiberius cried halt, it was open
to the critics to find a malevolent explanation in his jealousy of
Germanicus, but it is much more likely to have been the
deliberate policy of an emperor who had knowledge of Germany.
Thus, although Arminius presently fell a victim to his own
ambition, and perished by the dagger of a tyrannicide kinsman,
he had done his work and saved the liberty of Germany.
Henceforth the Romans confined themselves to the Rhine
frontier, though they had posts and summer camps beyond it.
By degrees the generals of the Upper and Lower Armies in
Germany developed into governors of two German provinces,
but Germany was unconquered. There was a great military
road along the left bank of the Rhine joining the garrison
towns where the legions were quartered. Mogontiacum
(Mainz) and Vetera Castra (Xanten) remained as the head-
quarters, until the latter was superseded by Cologne (Colonia
Agrippinensis) founded under Claudius. Trier (Augusta
Treverorum), another foundation of about the same date, grew
into an important centre of Roman civilisation, as its majestic
Roman gate* and fine amphitheatre still bear witness. Under
Claudius also the great Via Claudia over the Brenner Pass was
completed, and the canal joining the Maas to the Rhine.
This was better work for Roman soldiers than slaughtering
Chatti and Chauci in their native forests. The re-entrant angle
of the Rhine and Danube about the Black Forest, where the
* Plate 52.
263
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
rivers run small, was recognised as a danger-point. The
barbarian Germans were accordingly cleared away to make
room for a body of Gallic emigrants, who received lands on
condition of paying a tithe of their produce as rent, and of
undertaking their own defence. This was a new piece of
frontier policy which was often imitated in later times.
It seems to have been the Flavian emperors, Vespasian and
Domitian, who advanced a step farther. On the other side of
the Rhine and beyond these Agri Decumates the Romans
Roman Limes
began to construct a line of forts and wooden watch-towers
linked by a rampart of earth, and known as the Limes Trans-
Rhenamis. This frontier of Upper Germany left the Rhine
between Linz and Andernach, crossed the Lahn at Ems, and
then turned eastwards north of Wiesbaden (Aquae Mattiacae)
and Frankfort. After Saalburg it runs on a north-easterly
curve to Griiningen, whence it turns south, and continues for
more than 100 miles through Aschaffenburg and Worth to
join the Rhaetian limes at Lorch. From Lorch the Rhsetian
limes goes eastwards to join the Danube a few miles above
Regensburg. At first perhaps it was little more than a police and
customs limit, but it gradually grew into a formidable barrier
behind which the Roman Empire rested in a too profound
security. Trajan continued it. Hadrian strengthened it with
a wall and palisade. Commodus further fortified and extended
it. A similar bulwark ran along the Danube. This policy of
264
PLATE LXXIV. DETAIL OF THE ANTONINE COLUMN
Anderson
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
setting up immobile defences like the Great Wall of China is
always a dangerous one. Useful at first and visibly strong, it
tends to lull the defenders into a false security. The camps
and forts grew into towns, the armies into peaceful citizens
living with their wives and children and devoting themselves
to trade and husbandry. Meanwhile the barbarians on the
other side were growing stronger and learning the art of war
as fast as the Romans were forgetting it.
After this the danger-point for the Empire shifted gradually
eastwards down the Danube. Claudius had converted Thrace
from an allied kingdom into a Roman province in A.D. 46. Much
difficulty was caused by the Dacians, who lived just across the
Danube on the north bank opposite the Roman province of
Moesia and in the modern Roumania. As the Danube was apt
to become frozen in winter it ceased to offer a satisfactory
frontier, so long as there were powerful enemies on the other
side. At first the Romans tried the system of transplanting
them, 50,000 under Augustus and 100,000 under Nero, and
settling them in the province of Moesia. But it was a stupid
policy, for it meant constant intrigues between the free barbarians
and their enslaved kinsfolk. Vespasian accordingly moved
two legions down from Dalmatia to reinforce the two already
stationed in Moesia. But presently there arose an able and
heroic king called Decebalus, who welded the Dacians into a
compact and organised kingdom, and began to menace the
security of the Empire. Like Marbod of Bohemia, he drilled
his barbarians on the Roman model. In A.D. 85 he invaded
Moesia, won victories and did great damage. Domitian, called
upon to face this peril, was content with inflicting a single
defeat upon them and then accepting Decebalus as a client
prince. He gave him Roman engineers and artillerymen, and
even sent gifts of money which the barbarians were pleased to
regard as tribute. This has been set down as cowardice, but
it was certainly unwisdom in Domitian, for Decebalus grew
stronger and more dangerous. It was left for Trajan, the
greatest soldier of all the early emperors, to face this thorny
265
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
problem in the two great Dacian Wars of 101 and 105 B.C.
The whole war is depicted for us by pictures in stone. The
spiral reliefs which cover the column of Trajan tell us, with far
more detail than the narrative of Dio, the history of the two
Dacian Wars. We see the embarkation of the Roman army,
we see it on the march with its scouts in advance, we see the
solemn purifications, sacrifices, and harangues which preceded
battle. We see the battles themselves, in which the Romans
with sword and pilum defeat the Dacians and their mail-clad
Sarmatian cavalry. The great bridge built across the Danube at
Viminacium by the Greek architect Apollodorus is faithfully
depicted. We can watch the siege of the Dacian capital,
Sarmizegethusa, and observe the construction of the siege-
engines. Scenes of pathos are most graphically portrayed,
the torturing of Roman prisoners by the barbarian women, the
suicide of the Dacian chiefs by poison, and the death of the
heroic Decebalus. At intervals throughout the story there
appears and reappears the calm and stately figure of Trajan,
steering his ship, sacrificing for victory, leading the march or
the charge, haranguing his troops, directing the labour of
engineering, consulting with his officers, or receiving the sub-
mission of the foe.*
The end of the two wars was that Dacia was annexed and
became a province of the Empire. Here, as elsewhere, Trajan
showed his contempt of natural frontiers. As a gallant soldier
himself, he believed in the invincibility of the Roman arms, and
preferred to put his trust in legions rather than in walls. For this
he has been condemned by modern historians, but history is on
his side. More than anything else it was reliance on natural
frontiers and artificial ramparts, with the consequent loss of
military instincts, which was to be the undoing of the Roman
Empire.
On the eastern frontier it was for a long time a game of
tug-of-war between Rome and Parthia, the rope being supplied
by the kingdom of Armenia. The Augustan policy of filling
* Plates 53, 54, 55, 56.
266
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
the oriental thrones with princes trained at Rome was not a
great success. You might learn bad lessons at court; you
might even learn to know Rome without learning to love or
fear her. The princes sent to Armenia or Parthia were un-
stable allies and the ordinary course of events was for the
Romans to send out a king to Armenia and for the Parthians
to depose him. Again it was left for Trajan to attack this
problem in the old Roman fashion ; when the usual submissive
embassy arrived, Trajan answered, as a Metellus might have
done, that he wanted deeds not words, and he led his army on.
Trajan found the Eastern legions, whose headquarters were at
Antioch, already civilianised and orientalised so that they had
become useless for fighting. At this time there were four
legions in Syria, one in Judaea and one in the new province of
Cappadocia. The first task was to restore discipline and energy
to these troops. Then, without bloodshed, in A.D. 115 Armenia
was declared a province. Parthia, distracted by civil war, was
overrun, its capital Ctesiphon easily taken by siege. Mesopo-
tamia was made a province, and to Parthia was given a new
king. The client kingdom of Adiabene became a third new
province under the name of Assyria. This meant that the
Tigris became the eastern frontier instead of the Euphrates.
Unfortunately these conquests had been too easily achieved,
largely through the temporary dissensions of the Parthians, who
accordingly failed to experience the salutary discipline of real
defeat. Trajan died on his way home, and Hadrian, who was
more of a statesman than a warrior, reversed his predecessor's
policy. He surrendered the three new provinces and even
acquiesced in the Parthians' choice of a king of their own in
place of the Roman nominee. The only new provinces of
Trajan's creation which Hadrian retained were Dacia and
Arabia.
Although their military force was contemptible, their
spiritual zeal made the Jews the most difficult people to govern
in the whole empire. Worshipping their Jealous God with
fierce ardour, they could not join in the Caesar-worship which
267
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
was the outward sign of loyalty and patriotism throughout the
Roman world. Moreover the Semitic question had already
begun to vex the soul of Europe. Throughout the East and
especially in the trade centres such as Antioch, Alexandria,
and Cyrene there were already large communities of Jews who
lived on the usual terms of deep-rooted racial animosity with
their neighbours. It is only fair to the Roman government to
admit that it tried to conciliate its difficult subjects. Though
the vanity of Caligula led him to accept the suggestion of
erecting a colossal statue of him in the Temple at Jerusalem,
yet when the philosopher Philo and his fellow-ambassadors came
over to plead against the outrage the emperor good-humouredly
remarked that if people refused to worship him it was more
their misfortune than their fault. As a rule the Roman pro-
curators who administered Galilee and Judaea were almost
too tolerant of Jewish fanaticism. The Jews were exempt from
military service : their Sabbaths were respected. A Roman
soldier who tore a book of the law was put to death. It was
useless to argue with such sects as the Zealots and Assassins.
The Anti-Semite spirit broke out into massacres. In Caesarea,
Damascus, and elsewhere the Gentiles slew the Jews; in
Alexandria and Cyrene the Jews slaughtered the Gentiles. In
Jerusalem the Romans had to face violent discord between the
rival factions, and naturally they sided with the more tolerant
and moderate Sadducees against the stern Pharisees and the
smaller sects of extremists. In A.D. 66 matters came to a
crisis. A Roman garrison was attacked and destroyed: the
army which came from Syria to avenge them was repulsed with
slaughter. This occurred while the Emperor Nero was on one
of his theatrical tours in Greece, and in the next year Vespasian
was sent with an army of three legions and auxiliaries which
increased its numbers to more than 50,000. During the death
of Nero and the short reigns of his three successors, Vespasian
was gradually subduing Palestine and driving the irrecon-
cilables before him into Jerusalem. Vespasian himself became
emperor and it was left to his son Titus to finish the tragedy.
268
PLATE LXXVI. ANTIXOUS : VILLA ALHANI RELIEF
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
The siege of Jerusalem (A.D. 70) was one of the most difficult
tasks which the Romans ever had to face. In addition to its
natural strength there were six lines of fortification to be over-
come one by one, and each was defended with all the grim
tenacity of which the Semite race is capable when it is on the
defensive. Five months the great siege lasted, and at the end
Jerusalem was a heap of ruins. Some of the temple treasures
were saved for the Roman triumph, and the Arch of Titus still
shows us the famous seven-branched golden candlestick being
carried up to the temple of Capitoline Jove.* It is said that
one million Jews perished in the siege and 100,000 more were
sold into slavery. Jerusalem became merely the camp of the
Tenth Legion. All Judaea became one province, and the
scattered Jews were only allowed to keep their privileges on
condition of registering their names and paying a fee of two
denarii every year for their licence.
But this awful lesson had not quenched the fire of Jewish
patriotism nor killed their hopes of an earthly Messiah who
should restore the kingdom of David. Once again under
Hadrian there was a Jewish rebellion stimulated by the fact
that the emperor forbade the rite of circumcision and decreed
the foundation of a Roman colony at Jerusalem with a temple
to Jupiter on Mount Zion. The revolt was stamped out with
merciless severity and the Jews were scattered for ever.
The only other noteworthy addition to the Roman Empire
was Mauretania (Morocco), which was incorporated as a
province by Caligula. The motive alleged was the emperor's
desire to possess himself of the treasures of Ptolemy, its
king.
On the whole, then, we can see that the Roman Empire
had almost reached its natural limits. It had seized as much
as it could govern, and now, with the exception of the Parthian
kingdom, all that lay outside its frontiers was naked barbarism.
So the centre grew more and more unwarlike, while the legions
had little to occupy their minds except the speculation whether
* Plate 58.
269
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
their particular general had a chance of the purple. For this
reason alone the Caesars were loth to embark on conquests,
unless like Trajan they were willing to neglect everything else
and undertake the campaigns in person. A victorious general
was always to be dreaded by his master.
THE PRINCIPATE
At first sight the position of the princeps, who was absolute
lord of this world, is one of immense and terrible power. But
earthly power has its natural limits in human weakness. The
weak or wicked emperors were generally the servants of their
favourites, male or female, or they lived under fear of the
legions. Without their bureaux they were helpless, and the
bureaux in the skilled hands of Roman knights or Greek
freedmen were acquiring the real power. But it is astonishing
how much actual work was done by the more conscientious
Caesars. In Pliny's letters we see what minute details were
referred by a provincial governor to his master and how
minutely they were answered. The answers may be, and no
doubt sometimes are, the composition of secretaries, but
there is a personal note in them which often suggests the
emperor's own dictation. Probably Trajan was exceptionally
industrious and Pliny exceptionally meticulous. Nevertheless
it looks as if a strong emperor actually ruled this vast domain.
It is one of the merits of despotism that the monarch's power
increases automatically with his virtues and capacity. A
Caligula could not do so much harm : an Augustus, a Claudius,
a Trajan, or a Hadrian might benefit millions of mankind. I
think it is clear that they did so. The insane work of slaughter,
which is all that interests the ordinary historian, had almost
ceased. All over the world the markets were full, the work-
shops were noisy with hammers, the seas were thronged with
ships, the great highways busy with travellers. Justice was
strong and even-handed. Taxes were low and equitably
assessed. For the most part men had liberty to go their own
ways and worship their own gods. From the accession of
270
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
Augustus to the death of Antoninus Pius — and with a few
intervals one might safely go further — the world was enjoying
one of its golden periods of prosperity. It is unhistorical to
look ahead and pronounce this happy world to be already
doomed.
Yet, on the other hand, it is idle to deny the unsound spots in
this imposing fabric of empire. The weakness was at the centre.
The Roman aristocracy was gay and splendid, but not happy or
secure. The ghost of the Republic still haunted her streets. To
make a necessary repetition : if Augustus had been succeeded
by a son as wise and tactful as himself, and if the throne had
then passed to a third generation with the soldierly qualities of
Trajan and the statesmanship of Diocletian, the Empire might
have taken shape as a strong hereditary monarchy with a senate
co-operating heartily, and an army obeying loyally. But that
was not fated so. Tiberius was too proud to play the comedy
as Augustus had done: instead, he made enemies of the
aristocracy and became suspicious and tyrannical. When
they lampooned and abused him, he turned into a despot.
Cremutius Cordus, the historian, was executed for calling
Cassius " the last of the Romans." At last Tiberius withdrew
himself in gloomy despair and left the government in the hands
of an unscrupulous intriguer, the knight Sejanus, who still
further harried and alienated the nobles. It is hard to know
the truth about Gaius, so palpably is his story written by satirists.
He may have been mad. The adulation which surrounded the
Caesars was enough to turn the head of a vain youth. He was
certainly extravagant and increased his unpopularity by taxes
upon litigants and prostitutes. It was the officers of the
praetorian guard who conspired to assassinate him.
Claudius was chosen by the bodyguard who had murdered
his predecessor and he bought their allegiance with £i 20 apiece.
He was the uncle of Caligula, but no process of adoption had
lifted him into the royal house. Still he was the grandson of
Livia and his assumption of the name " Caesar " passed without
comment. Claudius set Augustus before him as his model and
271
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
in all things he was careful to return to republican precedents.
He took the office of censor for the revision of the senate-roll.
He increased the patriciate, encouraged the State religion and
by personal attention improved the administration of justice.
The cause of most of the trouble during the preceding reigns
had been the practice of " delation." Even under the Republic
criminal prosecutions had been the easiest method of obtaining
political notoriety. Tiberius and Gaius had added the motive
of pecuniary gain. Claudius now repealed the obnoxious laws
of treason, punished the laying of information and forbade
slaves to give evidence against their masters. By the repeal
of the treason laws Claudius had almost ceased to be a monarch,
and he was careful to revive the old legislative processes of
the republic. On the other hand, under Claudius the power of
the bureaucracy was greatly increased, and the affairs of the
Empire were principally conducted by the three powerful Greek
secretaries.
On the death of Claudius — when the emperors died in
their beds poison was invariably alleged — Nero succeeded
almost as a matter of course. His mother Agrippina had
secured his succession by having him raised to honour just as
had been done for Tiberius by Augustus. He had already
been styled "Prince of the Youth," designated for the consul-
ship and endowed with the proconsular power. There was,
however, a possible rival in the young Britannicus, and Nero
was chosen by the praetorian guard just as clearly as Claudius.
During the first five years, when the young prince was engaged
in enjoying himself under the guidance of the philosopher
Seneca, the senate had nothing to fear, and the Roman state
enjoyed its liberty, but when Tigellinus, the wicked prefect of
the guard, gained his evil ascendancy over the mind of Nero
there were some prosecutions of influential senators which
made the whole senate tremble. Yet, even in these worst days of
the worst of emperors, good administration proceeded. Nero
himself made an interesting proposal for the abolition of customs
in the Empire and, indeed, may fairly be called " The Father of
272
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
Free Trade." But the capitalist class succeeded in suppress-
ing the proposal. The duties on corn were, however, reduced
and the collection of taxes carefully regulated. Charges of
extortion against tax-collectors were given precedence in the
law courts, a measure of justice beyond anything that the
modern state has attempted. It was much more the dancing
and singing of the p-rinceps than the extortions of Tigellinus
and the judicial murders of noblemen which caused the un-
popularity which brought Nero to his doom. Among the
many who fell victims to the ferocity of Tigellinus — for Nero
himself was probably harmless enough — were two genuine
Republicans of the old school, men who were genuine believers
in the Stoic faith and who kept the birthdays of Brutus and
Cassius as annual feasts. It is probable that genuine opposition
of this sort was far from rare among the aristocracy of the
Empire. Writers like Lucan and Tacitus were evidently in
sympathy with it, and though Thrasea Paetus and Barea Soranus
are famous for the Stoic deaths they died, yet they were only
two out of many who lived wholly on the memory of the
Republic.
Nero's fall was caused directly by the defection of the
praetorian guards, whose allegiance had been bought in the
name of Galba. Nero was the last member of the Julio-
Claudian family, and at his death the last shadow of dynastic
claim passed away. The succession of the principate became
a mere scramble in which the strongest or the luckiest or the
heaviest briber won the day. Pretenders sprang up against
Galba, several of the armies put forward their generals as
competitors for the throne; and Galba himself had not even
enough generosity to pay the bribes by which he had secured
his throne. Thus the year 69 was a year of incessant civil war.
Galba was murdered in the streets of Rome ; Otho was defeated
in battle near Bedriacum and slain in his camp, Vitellius ; the
choice of the legions in Germany, reigned from April to
December, when Rome was once more occupied by a citizen
army. The legions of Syria, seeing that their fellow-soldiers
s 273
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
of Spain and Germany had already made their generals into
emperors, had determined to take a hand in the game, and
now Vespasian came as the fourth Caesar in the space of a single
year.
It speaks well for the solidity of the imperial system as
organised by Augustus that it survived the shock of such
events as these. It proves that the system was everything and
the man little or nothing.
The new Emperor Vespasian, who succeeded after all this
turmoil, was different from his predecessors in that he had two
grown-up sons ready to succeed him. It is said that Mucianus,
a still more powerful Eastern general, had surrendered his
claims because he was childless. If so, it was nobly and wisely
done. Vespasian was able and willing to restore the machinery
of the Augustan principate. He was himself frankly a humble
Sabine with no claims of birth. He was firm but not oppressive
towards the senate, and he kept control over the praetorian
guard by appointing Titus, his son, to its command. He also
established the succession beyond doubt by making Titus his
consort. Vespasian and Titus were elected consuls year by
year. Vespasian's principal work was to restore the financial
credit of the government. Unfortunately the two sons, Titus,
and then Domitian, who followed him upon the throne and
with him make up the "Flavian" dynasty, were scarcely worthy
of their father. Titus was " the darling of the human race,"
generous and mild to the senators, but too fond of his popu-
larity to be a strong ruler, and Domitian was a genuine tyrant.
With his autocratic system of rule he was naturally oppressive
to the aristocracy, and his name is in consequence written on
the pages of history as that of a monster of cruelty. Domitian
certainly made constitutional changes which rendered the
monarchy a more open fact. He took the consulship for ten
years to come, he became censor and drew up the senate-roll
to suit his fancy, he refused the usual request of the senators
that the emperor should admit that he had no power to con-
demn a senator to death. Also he openly spurned the proud
274
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
senators and permitted the servile modes of address which
Augustus and other emperors had forbidden.
These high-handed proceedings made the senators hate and
plot against him. Plots were followed by executions, and
Domitian gradually became more and more tyrannical. More
of the Stoic Republican party were executed, and the odious
practice of delation came once more into vogue. At last there
was a successful plot organised in the palace, and Domitian
fell to the dagger.
With the three succeeding emperors, Nerva (96-98), Trajan
(98-1 17), and Hadrian (i 17-138), we have a series of genuine
constitutional rulers who show the system of the principate at
its best. The excellent figure which these rulers cut on the
page of history is not wholly unconnected with the fact that we
have now passed beyond the region illuminated by the satire of
Tacitus and the tittle-tattle of Suetonius. Their deeds speak
for them. In Nerva we have the senate's choice of a ruler,
elderly, blameless, but decidedly weak. Had he not died in
less than two years, he could easily have brought the throne of
the Caesars down to the ground. Knowing his own weakness,
Nerva had adopted the foremost soldier of his day as his heir,
and Trajan, beloved of the soldiers and ready to purchase the
love of the Rome rabble, succeeded without a murmur. He
spent most of his reign in the camp. In the camp he died, and
the succession was by no means clear when Hadrian, a kinsman
though a distant one, had the courage to seize and the luck to
hold the imperial power. All these three emperors granted the
senate's claim that the emperor should not have the power to
condemn a senator to death, and in some aspects the senate
seemed to have regained much of its old independence. But
Trajan was too masterful and Hadrian too ubiquitous to leave
any real scope for senatorial initiative. It was really under
these benevolent despots that the Dyarchy ceased to have any
significance. As usual the benevolence of the despot was the
most fatal enemy to liberty. Not only in Rome but even in
the municipalities of Italy politics were ceasing to have any real
275
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
meaning, and men of standing had to be coerced into taking
part in the comedy. The bureaucracy of the imperial palace
now governed the world, and the better it governed the more
quickly did the life-blood of the Roman world run dry in its
veins. We now find imperial " curators " and accountants
going up and down the provinces to set their finances in order.
Whenever there is trouble in any corner of the earth, an imperial
"corrector" travels down from Rome by the admirable system
of imperial posts to set it right. Where, of old, a local squire,
the patronus of the municipality, would leave a charitable
legacy for the maintenance and education of poor children, the
state with its admirable system of " alimenta " was beginning
to assume the responsibility. The state had its Development
Fund which made loans on mortgage at very low interest,
generally 5 but sometimes i\ per cent., to small farmers, and
the interest was applied to orphanages and the education of the
poor. Nerva has the credit for introducing this splendid
system of public charity and Hadrian developed it. It was
Hadrian also who gave the finishing touches to the organisation
of the civil service as a close bureaucracy entirely divorced
from the military profession. This service was chiefly in the
hands of the knights, and it ranged in a carefully graded
hierarchy of officialdom down from the three principal Secre-
taries of State, the Finance Minister, the Chief Secretary, and
the Minister of Petitions, down to the Fiscal Advocates who
looked after local revenue. Though the Roman Empire is
often represented as groaning under the weight of taxation,
and no doubt the more extravagant emperors did amass heavy
liabilities, yet Hadrian, who followed an emperor extravagant
both in warfare and building, was able to remit about nine
millions sterling of arrears due to the fisc. He also introduced
a system of periodical reassessments and gave the fullest liberty
for his tenants-in-chief to appeal against the collectors.
Hadrian it was, also, who really introduced the system of
installing a junior colleague in the Empire, a plan which
Augustus had foreshadowed in his elevation of Tiberius. This
276
PLATE LXXIX. ALTAR DISCOVERED AT OSTIA
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
plan produced one of the firmest dynasties which ever held the
imperial throne, namely, the Antonines, Marcus Aurelius, Titus,
Antoninus Pius, and Commodus, who ruled from Hadrian's
death in 138 to 192. The age of the first two Antonines is con-
sidered by Gibbon and many others to be the culmination of the
Roman imperial system.
Two facts of very great importance stand out from this
hasty review of the principate during its first two centuries. In
the first place, it is still, in the strict constitutional sense, a com-
promise. The theory of the constitution had not changed since
Augustus, if, indeed, it had ever changed. It is still a Republic
— Respublica Romano, — governed by senate, consuls, tribunes,
and an intermittent public assembly. There is, as there nearly
always had been, a princeps, that is, leading citizen, a man raised
by personal eminence and prestige far above his colleagues.
Certain powers are delegated to him by the state. Above all
he is master of the legions because he has consular or pro-
consular authority over all the provinces where troops are
stationed. There still remained certain theoretical limitations
to his power. He could not, for example, impose a tax on
Rome or Italy by his own authority. But the feebleness and
sycophancy of the senate and magistracy made him actually
omnipotent. When a certain senator was pointed out by
Caesar's freedman as an enemy to Caesar the doomed man was
set upon by his colleagues and stabbed to death with their pens
in the senate-house. It is true that this sycophancy was not
altogether the fault of the senate. Under the tyrannical
emperors like Tiberius, Nero, and Domitian, emperors who en-
couraged the "delator," no senator's life was secure. At a
frown from Caesar it was customary to go home and open one's
veins after writing a complimentary will in which one bequeathed
everything to that best of rulers. This sort of behaviour led
inevitably to the growth of the monarchy. The emperor was
the one person who dared to act, and the more capable and
well-intentioned the ruler, the more closely were the fetters
riveted around the necks of the Roman People. The silent
277
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
growth of bureaucracy, of which the historians have little to
tell us, but which we can gather from the inscriptions of the
period, is both the symptom and the cause of this increasing
power of the principate.
In the second place, it is important to notice that although
the city of Rome was growing marvellously in riches and
splendour, she was losing her old domination in the world,
and becoming the capital instead of the mistress of the Empire.
The magistracies of the city had almost ceased to have any
importance except as inferior grades on the road to proconsul-
ships. Italy herself was sinking into the position of one among
the provinces of the Empire, and with the growth of Hadrian's
centralised system of imperial administration even the provinces
were losing their significance as units of government. It seems
impossible that almost the whole of Europe and large parts of
Asia and Africa could ever have been governed by one man or
even one bureau. Yet it was almost achieved by the Roman
Empire. The world-state was almost a fact, and a few more
Trajans and Hadrians would have accomplished it. The city-
state idea, as a unit of patriotism, still flourished. But with
the great roads stretching like railways to the four corners
of the earth, and the imperial officers travelling along them,
with the legions massed along the frontiers and men recruited
in Spain sent to serve in Britain, the sense of territory, from
which the modern state was to arise, began to develop itself.
IMPERIAL ROME
If the external history of the Empire has suffered by being
so largely in the hands of the opposition, the intimate life of
the city has been still more distorted through being written
for us by satirists. The humorous or venomous descriptions
of Juvenal, Martial, and Petronius form our principal source of
information, and Pliny, who gives us a very different picture
of tranquil and cultivated leisure or of useful activity carried on
in refined and elegant surroundings, has commonly been regarded
as a remarkable exception. Yet the material remains are on
278
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
the side of Pliny ; and we owe a great debt to modern writers,
like Dr. Dill, who have been able to emphasise this point.
Romances such as those of Lytton, Melville, and Sienckewicz
have embroidered the theme of Juvenal, and everybody nowa-
days has his vision of Imperial Rome based upon such fairy-
tales. It is probably vain to attempt a refutation of the popular
view which pictures the Roman of the Empire as exclusively
spending his time in the amphitheatre watching the lions
devour the Christians, except when he was supping on nightin-
gales' tongues from plates of gold. Moreover these things are
a not unimportant part of the truth. Imperial Rome remained
as bloody and brutal in its amusements as Republican Rome.
In fact, as the emperors were not only richer than the old
senators, but also much more carefully watched and bitterly
lampooned, so the number of wild beasts slain at a venatio of
Trajan exceeded the slaughters exhibited by Pompeius. Doubt-
less the imperial epicure Apicius excelled the republican glutton
Lucullus in the variety of his menu, and the lascivious enter-
tainments of Petronius Arbiter and his master Nero certainly
dwarfed the attempts of Sulla. At heart it was the same
Roman People, enjoying the same stupid pleasures and violent
sensations under circumstances of greater magnificence and
refinement. It was a society founded on slavery, acknowledging
no limits to the free indulgence of pleasure. But one miscon-
ception must be combated. The whole imperial period of five
centuries should not be regarded as one slippery Gadarene
slope down which the Romans were hurrying to destruction.
Fashions came and went. Extravagance was at its height
under Nero : there was a reaction towards greater simplicity
under Vespasian. Under Trajan and Hadrian life was orderly
and refined. Under M. Aurelius philosophy was even more
fashionable than vice. Nor was bloodshed the only form of
public enjoyment ; the amphitheatres often presented spectacles
quite as inoffensive and much more splendid than our modern
hippodromes and circuses. Chariot- racing, in particular, though
a good deal more dangerous than the modern steeplechase,
279
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
took its place along with gladiators and beast-baiting as the
popular sport, and the Romans showed as much enthusiasm
for Coryphseus and Hirpinus as we do for our Ormondes and
Persimmons. The charioteer Lacerna had as much vogue with
them as had Fred Archer with our fathers, and they took sides
with the Prasina Factio even more seriously than we do with
Light or Dark Blue oarsmen. The Romans had an inherited
taste for blood. There were philosophers who condemned
gladiatorial shows, but the defence of the ancient sportsman
was similar to and perhaps not less true than the modern fox-
hunter's excuse: the gladiators themselves enjoyed the fun
almost as much as the spectators.
On the whole, apart from its follies, material civilisation
was steadily advancing during the whole period at present
under review. In such matters as transit, public health, police,
water-supply, engineering, building, and so forth, Rome of the
second century left off pretty much where the reign of Queen
Victoria was to resume. The modern city of Rome is obtain-
ing its drinking-water out of about three of the nine great
aqueducts which ministered to the imperial city. The hot-air
system which warms the hotels of modern Europe and America
was in general use in every comfortable villa of the first century
A.D. Education was more general and more accessible to the
poor in A.D. 200 than in A.D. 1850. The siege artillery employed
by Trajan was as effective, probably, as the cannon of Vauban.
The city of Rome must have been a wonderful spectacle
under the emperors. One of our modern international exhi-
bitions might faintly recall a little of its splendours, with gilt
and stucco for gold and marble. Northward from the slope of
the Aventine Hill there was a succession of majestic public
buildings, temple beyond temple, forum beyond forum, as each
of the great emperors had added to the work of his predecessor
and endeavoured to eclipse it. At your feet would be the
Circus Maximus, where the chariot-races were held, and
behind it the Palatine Hill crowded with palaces. To the east
of it ran the Triumphal Road passing through the Arch of
280
The Roman Forum in the early Empire
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Constantine to the Colossus of Nero and the mighty Flavian
Amphitheatre known to us as the Colosseum. From there the
Sacred Way led north-west through the Arch of Titus past the
Temple of Venus and Rome and the Basilica of Constantine to
a series of stately fora, opening one from the other and con-
taining altars, columns, arches, statues, and temples surrounded
with shady colonnades, whose cloisters served for business and
pleasure. Above them on the west rose the ancient Capitoline
Hill crowned with its great Temple of Jupiter and immemorial
citadel. Picture these magnificent spaces filled with grave
citizens in their flowing white togas, hurrying slaves in their
bright tunics, visitors and barbarians from all corners of the
earth, trousered Gauls, skin-clad Sarmatians, mitred Parthians.
Every now and then the burly gladiators swagger through the
crowd admired by every one, or a procession of the shaven
begging priests of Isis passes by with strange cries and
gestures. Perhaps the lictors come swinging down the hill
bidding every one make way for the slaves who carry the litter
of the emperor who is on his way to sacrifice. Or fancy the
crowd in the Great Amphitheatre, which held more than eighty
thousand spectators, with the purple and gold awnings spread
to protect them from the blazing sunshine, the auditorium per-
fumed with scents and cooled by fountains, and the arena at
their feet flooded with water to present a naval combat. It is
a city wrapped in profound peace, still dreaming amid its
splendours that it is the mistress of the world.
And these signs of magnificent material riches were not
confined to Rome. Alexandria would almost rival her.
Asiatic towns like Ephesus and Antioch presented a similar
appearance of luxury and opulence. In the north Lugudunum
and even Londinium had a splendour of their own. In Gades
Spain had a handsome and highly civilised capital. The Roman
remains at Trier utterly dwarf the comfortable erections of a
prosperous modern town. Out in the desert at Palmyra* and
Ba'albek \ there were rising into existence those huge buildings
* Plate 59. f Plates 60, 61, 63, 63.
282
-3^
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
which testify to the industry fostered by the provincial govern-
ment of the emperors. Along the sea-coast of Campania there
were sea-fronts of continuous villas whose marble fragments are
still washed up in the Bay of Naples. It tasks the imagination
of genius to conjure up that glowing world of the past out of
the ruined foundations which remain. Turner's famous picture
of Baiae represents a successful attempt to do so. Pompeii,
wonderful as it is, was only a very small and obscure country
town. Yet it was lavishly provided with temples, baths,
theatre, and amphitheatre.
On the coast of North Africa, where nothing but man's
labour organised under a good government is required to make
the desert blossom as a rose, there was a teeming population
which prospered on agriculture. Timgad (Thamugadi) was
founded in the year 100 as a colony by Trajan, and it was the
head-quarters of the Third Legion. Here, in the blank desert
of to-day, the French explorers have revealed porticoes and
colonnades, a forum, a municipal senate-house, a theatre, a
capitol, rostra, a triumphal arch, baths, shrines, and temples,
together with the aqueduct and fountains which alone made all
this splendour possible.* For public munificence this age is
unequalled in history. It must have been a very powerful
sense of patriotism which compelled every rich man to devote
so large a part of his fortune to the embellishment of his native
town. The benefactions of the modern millionaire seem
miserly in comparison. Pliny, who was not a very rich man as
wealth was accounted in his day, presented his native town of
Como with a library at a cost of nearly .£9000, and maintained
it with an annual endowment of more than ^800. He offered
to contribute one-third to the cost of a secondary school, and
made the wise provision that the parents of the boys should
contribute the rest, in order that they might feel an interest in
the school and take pains in the choice of suitable teachers.
He gave nearly ,£5000 more for the support of poor children.
He bequeathed more than .£4000 for public baths and nearly
* Plate 64.
283
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
,000 to his freedmen and for public feasts. And, as Dr.
Dill has pointed out, the inscriptions of every municipal town
prove that this princely generosity and patriotism were by no
means the exception. " There was in those days an immense
civic ardour, an almost passionate rivalry, to make the mother
city a more pleasant and a more splendid home." Among the
most princely of these benefactors was the Athenian Professor
of Rhetoric, Herodes Atticus, who added a new quarter to
Athens in the reign of Hadrian.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of life in the Roman
Empire under the good emperors of the second century is the
growth of a lower class with occupations and ideals of its own.
We have already remarked that the poor free Roman of
republican days scarcely emerges into the light except as a
soldier. But now the inscriptions show us a happy and in-
dustrious class of artisans and humble tradesmen, grading down
through the freedmen to the slaves, many of whom now lived
and worked under quite tolerable conditions of life. Especially
noteworthy is the social tendency of the day. Every occupa-
tion and craft was forming its guilds or "collegia" about which
the inscriptions give us full and most interesting details. The
collegia were not quite Friendly Societies, and still less Trade
Unions, though they undoubtedly claimed political privileges
and perhaps even made some attempt at collective bargaining
with the public. Sometimes they obtained exemption from
taxation. They dined together, they had their chapels and
festivals, their colours and processions. They had officers
modelled on the old Roman magistracy, with senators as com-
mittee and a queestor as treasurer. They had their list of
patrons who were expected to earn the honour by generosity.
In the main they were burial clubs. Even slaves, and even
gladiators, the most despised of slaves, had their guilds and
fraternities : of course they were regulated by the state.
As yet, in spite of its growing centralisation and spirit of
paternal despotism, the Roman government was true to its
ancient principle of allowing full local autonomy. The municipal
284
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
life of a small Campanian town like Pompeii afforded scope
for local ambition and a political ardour to which the election
posters and the inscriptions scratched or scribbled on the walls
bear eloquent witness.* Sometimes the name of the candidate
is written with the laconic addition v. 6., " a good man," or it
may be " Please make P. Furius duumvir, he's a good man."
But occasionally the commendations are more explicit : " a most
modest young man," "he will look after the treasury," "worthy
of public office," and so forth. Sometimes a trade-guild
supports its candidate. Thus the liquor interest in politics is
already noticeable in A.D. 70. The humour of the opposition is
seen in such a poster as " the pickpockets request the election
of Vatia as aedile." And the intrusion of the feminine element
is to be observed in " Claudium Hvir. animula facit " (" His
little darling is working for Claudius as duumvir "). The wit
of the Pompeian wall-scribe was brighter, though not always
cleaner, than that of his modern counterpart. There is the
proud inscription "Restitutus has often deceived many girls,"
but there are also testimonies of conjugal affection like " Hirtia,
the Dewdrop, always and everywhere sends hearty greeting to
C. Hostilius, the Gnat, her husband, shepherd and gentle
counsellor." There is also an interesting account from a
bakery :
i Ib. of oil 6d. bran gel.
straw "j\d. a neck-wreath $\d.
hay zs. oil gal.
a day's wages >]\d.
We find advertisements like " Scaurus's tunny jelly, Blossom
Brand, put up by Eutyches, slave of Scaurus."
EDUCATION AND LITERATURE
A noticeable feature of the times was the wide diffusion of
education. Every one, it seems, could read and write, even the
slaves, even the humble British workman. Many a Pompeian
schoolboy has scribbled a line from Vergil, or Ovid, or
* Plates 65, 66.
285
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Propertius. Many an adult has added his or her original
compositions. We have seen in the case of Pliny how the rich
men interested themselves in the foundation of schools, both
primary and secondary, for their native towns. In the Greek
world, as maybe expected, education was most highly developed
and thoroughly graded from the elementary to the university
stage. For elementary schools the voluntary system was in
vogue, but it was under careful public supervision, and, as we
have seen, the state undertook the maintenance of poor children,
girls as well as boys. In contrast to the present day, the
teachers were often held in high honour, and many a public
inscription testifies to the gratitude of a town towards its
schoolmasters. That they also received more substantial
recognition is proved by the fact that they were often able to
leave handsome benefactions themselves. They were elected,
sometimes after an examination or after giving specimen lessons,
by the local education committees, with religious ceremonies,
and they took an oath of office on entering upon their duties.
They had their unions and associations like other professions.
In one inscription found in Callipolis, " The young men and the
lads and the boys and their teachers" unite to confer a wreath
of honour upon one of the mathematical masters. The teachers
seem to have been subject to annual election or re-election.
There were also visiting masters of special subjects. The
Greek secondary school tended to lay much stress upon athletics,
but it gave more attention to music and religion than similar
institutions of to-day. Reading, writing, and arithmetic together
with music, dancing, and drill were the staple subjects of the
elementary school. "Rhetoric," which meant the study of
literature on the technical side, as well as the practice of
declamations, was the main occupation in the high schools and
the universities. But philosophy, moral and physical, was also
carefully studied. University professors often rose to real
affluence.
In the polite world of Rome, literature was extremely
fashionable. Everybody was writing and insisting upon
286
PLATE LXXXIII. HADRIAN'S VILLA, TIVOLI
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
reading his compositions to his friends. These literary labours
were often pursued with amazing diligence. Both Pliny and
his uncle devoted themselves to reading and writing almost from
morning to night, and Pliny the Younger tells how he was
laughed at for carrying his notebooks with him even when he
was out boar-hunting. By the time he was fourteen he had
written a Greek tragedy. His sketch of a day's doings at his
country villa shows the literary perseverance of a Roman
gentleman. He rose at six and began to compose in his bed-
room. Then he would summon his secretary to take down the
result from dictation. At ten or eleven he would continue his
work in some shady colonnade, or under the trees in the
garden, after which he drove out, still reading. "A short
siesta, a walk, declamation in Greek and Latin, after the habit
of Cicero, gymnastic exercise, and the bath, filled the space
until dinner-time arrived." Even during dinner a book was
read aloud and the evening was enlivened by acting or music
or conversation. Many of Pliny's friends, such as Suetonius
and Silius Italicus, emulated this studious existence, and his
uncle even excelled it. The elder Pliny consulted two thousand
volumes in the writing of his Natural History alone, and he
left one hundred and sixty volumes of closely written notes and
excerpts. Nor was this an unimportant circle of literary book-
worms. On the contrary, it was the highest society of the day.
The elder Pliny was on terms of daily intercourse with the
Emperor Vespasian, and the younger Pliny besides being
governor of Bithynia was intimate with Trajan.
At first sight we may find it strange that all this strenuous de-
votion to study produced so little in the way of first-rate original
literature. It 'is of course customary to ascribe the decline —
assuming that it was a decline — of the Golden Age of Augustan
literature into the Silver Latin of Tacitus and Juvenal to the
tyranny of emperors like Tiberius and Nero. It is perfectly
true that Tiberius made it dangerous for senatorial historians
to praise the murderers of a Caesar. But that is a ludicrously
inadequate explanation for the eclipse of literature. The
287
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
experience of Vergil showed that it was possible for a great
loyalist to win fortune and glory amounting to idolisation. The
senators who wanted to continue their school declamations
against tyranny were certainly discouraged, but there was still
plenty of room for literary activity. The truth is, as we have
seen, that Augustan literature was not the work of a young
Rome, but of an old and perhaps already declining Graeco-
Roman culture. Again it was literary, not political, causes
which led to literary decline. Tacitus, who had for his themes
the conquest of Britain and the wars in Germany and the East,
the Siege of Jerusalem, the burning of Rome, the tragic Year
of the Four Emperors, the crimes and follies of Nero, and the
development of the great imperial system, complains of the lack
of interest in the history of his own times compared with those
of the heroic past. The tyranny that depressed literature
was of its own making, the tyranny of convention, classicism
and erudition. To take poetry, though so many noble writers
were toying with the epic, they only produced the pedantic
Tkebaid oi Statius, the weary Argonauticon of Silius Italicus,
an imitation of an imitation of Homer, and the Pharsalia of
Lucan, which, though it contains many a brilliant epigram and
memorable phrase, is to the majority of mankind almost un-
readable. This is simply because Lucan was consciously pursuing
the path which Vergil had pointed out and producing work
which was the logical succession to the style of the sEneid.
The Pharsalia is unmixed declamation, rhetoric shouting at
top pitch on page after page. Vergil had accomplished the
literary epic to perfection : to carry it any further in the same
direction was to incur tediousness. Above all, both Lucan and
Silius lacked the greatest of all Vergil's gifts, his wonderful
ear for verbal music. Vergil, like Milton, presented his epic
diluted for mortal ears with music and human nature. It
was not in the spirit that Lucan failed. He admired the
republican cause and Pompeius, its champion, quite as sincerely
as Vergil admired Augustus or Milton Cromwell. Thus it
was not politics, but the literary gift which caused his failure,
288
Fio. i.— SACRIFICIAL KITES.
FIG. 2.— PREPARING FOR A SACRIFICE.
PI.ATK LXXXIV.— TWO MOSAICS.
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
at least his failure to hold the ear of to-day. Past generations
have esteemed him high among the world's poets. Dante
owed not a little to Lucan and Statius as well as to Vergil.
It was only in its lighter forms that poetry continued to
make progress. The Silvce of Statius, which were shorter
occasional poems in elegiac or lyric measures thrown off at
odd moments with ease and rapidity, are far more interesting
than his frigid epic. Martial, the Spanish writer of vers de
socittd, has a pretty wit that is often surprisingly modern in
its tone. Certainly Juvenal towers overfall others who have
attempted satire. Horace had been content with an easy
familiarity of tone which might wheedle a friend into the path
of good sense by poking fun at his follies. Juvenal thunders
his denunciations of wickedness with a moral heat which is
surprising in an age often accused of feebleness. He does,
however, resemble Lucan in spoiling some of his effects by
want of light and shade, by a too-persistent flow of rhetoric.
He seems unable to distinguish between harmless follies like
playing the flute and real delinquencies like murdering one's
mother. He clearly draws far too black a picture of the men
and morals of his day. But the pulpit from which he preaches
is a high one.
If Juvenal is supreme over the poets of his time, Tacitus is
as clearly monarch of the prose-writers. He was continuing
the work of Livy and writing from the same republican
standpoint. But for history-writing he had certainly discovered
a finer style of rhetoric. Both are rhetoricians first and
historians a long way after, but the packed epigrams of Tacitus
say more in a line than Livy is capable of thinking in a chapter.
In describing a battle, a riot, or a panic, or in painting some
tragic scene, such as the death of Vitellius, Tacitus is un-
equalled. The freedom that was permitted to him and
Suetonius in depicting the crimes and follies of the earlier
Caesars affords remarkable evidence of the freedom of letters
under Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian. Here, again, it is necessary,
as in the case of Juvenal, to beware of accepting too literally
T 289
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
the severity of his criticisms upon the preceding generation.
To praise the past at the expense of the present was one of the
traditions of Roman literature. But Tacitus was the last of
Rome's great historians and his loss was irreparable.
All the erudition of the age added little to the real advance
of learning except in the domain of law. Industrious compilers
like Pliny the elder have preserved a great deal of ancient
lore for our study, but they are for the most part utterly un-
critical and unscientific. There were no scientific thinkers like
Aristotle in the Roman world. Still, some text-books which
served the Middle Ages for instruction were produced under
the principate, such as Vitruvius on architecture, Strabo and
Pomponius Mela on geography, Columella on agriculture,
Quintilian on rhetoric, and Galen on medicine. The latter
was state-physician to Marcus Aurelius and was employed by
him to study and combat the terrible plague which the Roman
army brought back from the East. But for medical science
he added little to his Greek master Hippocrates. In just the
same way, the philosophers came no nearer to the core of reality
than their masters of the fourth and third centuries before
Christ, hard though they toiled and much as they spoke and
wrote. They were indeed learning, what the old Greeks had
failed or scorned to learn, how to apply doctrines to life, but in
depth of thought they were so far behind that they ceased even
to be able to comprehend Aristotle. Even Philo, the profound
and learned Jewish philosopher, is doing little more than to
attempt an application of Platonic and other Greek ideas to the
teaching of Moses. Such originality as there was in the world
of letters still proceeded mainly from the provinces. Greece
was still putting forth original contributors to literature like
the novelist Lucian, the biographer and moralist Plutarch,
Pausanias the guide-book writer, Dio Chrysostom and
Apollonius the preachers. Africa produced a novelist in the
mysterious quack-magician Apuleius. Spain sent forth a
whole galaxy of talent in the two Senecas, Martial, Lucan, and
Quintilian. The younger Seneca, Nero's complacent tutor, is
290
o A
I'I.ATE LXXXV.— MUKAL PAINTING: FLUTE-PLAYER.
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
perhaps the most typical figure in the literature of the principate.
Trained as a rhetorician, like all the men of his day, his literary
work consists of rhetorical drama and rhetorical philosophy,
including some rhetorical science. No writer has ever attained
to such a position of wealth and honour by the exercise of his
pen. It cannot be said that Seneca's position was gained
without defilement, or that it brought him happiness. He was
largely responsible by his weak compliance for the deteriora-
tion of character in his imperial pupil. If so, it brought its own
retribution, for Nero drove him to suicide. Though Seneca's
tragedies are neglected to-day, they formed the connecting-
link between Euripides and the stage of the Renaissance.
It will be seen that the principal defect of thought and
literature under the Empire was its lack of originality. But,
after all, that had always been the deficiency of Roman writers.
It was due very largely to the overwhelming incubus of Greek
civilisation, from whose leading-strings the Romans, to the
end of time, never escaped. That in its turn arose chiefly
through the nature of their education which turned all their A
attention to style as the end of literary endeavour. Any one
who would argue against a classical education could find no
better argument than the relations between the two "classical "
peoples.
ART
With art it is much the same story; for the decoration of
their villas and colonnades the Romans of the Empire con-
tinued to prefer their statues imported from Greece. Pausanias
shows us that Greece, even in the second century A.D., was still
teeming with works of art of every kind. Impoverished and
shrunken as the old Greek cities were at this period, it shows
some high-mindedness that they still retained treasures which
would have fetched millions in the Trans-Adriatic markets.
There was, however, a brisk trade in copies and imitations of
the masterpieces. For statues, then, the Greek work of the
fifth and fourth centuries almost destroyed any attempt at
291
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
originality by the Romans. Only in portraiture was there
much progress, and here work of great power and vigour was
produced. It reaches the zenith perhaps under the Flavian
emperors, but their successors of the Antonine period and later
are often depicted on their busts with triumphant but unsparing
realism. The bust of Philip the Arabian in the Vatican is
one of the most striking. Sometimes it almost seems as if
there was a malicious spirit of caricature in these too faithful
portraits. Can Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher prince, have
presented to the world a visage so weak and so tonsorially
perfect?* Can Caracalla have borne his bloody mind so
visibly written on his face ? f In portraiture, there is certainly
progress and not decay.
Otherwise, to judge by the remains, sculptors were almost
confined to bas-relief. This was the medium chosen by emperor
after emperor for the narration of his exploits, and advances
were unquestionably made in the art of pictorial or narrative
sculpture. That this is a high art in itself may, I think, be
contested. One cannot escape from a sense of the practical
futility of telling the history of the Dacian Wars on a serpen-
tine band of ornament which soared away out of sight. It is
rather characteristic of the plodding Roman, who so often lost
sight of the wood in his faithful contemplation of the trees. If
we look for the end to which this art of narrative relief was
tending, we shall find it on the basis of the column of Antoninus
Pius preserved in the Vatican garden.J These cavalrymen
placidly gyrating round the group of standard-bearers, each on
his own little shelf, are so extremely life-like as to recall
nothing in the world so much as pieces of gingerbread. We
begin to perceive that Madame Tussaud would have been
hailed as a great creative artist in Imperial Rome. Neverthe-
less, without subscribing to all the superlatives of Mrs. Strong,
we may admit that Art was still alive and vigorous and still
scoring fresh technical triumphs in the Antonine period and
even later.
* Plate 67, Fig. 2. t Plate 68, Fig. i. J Plate 69.
292
PLATE LXXXVI. POMPEII : TWO VIEWS OF THE RUINS
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
Roman archaeologists have recently worked out the history
of Imperial Art with some precision. The reign of Tiberius
continued the classical tendencies of Augustus. Under
Claudius there was great constructional activity, mainly of a
utilitarian character. The Claudian aqueduct, whose immense
arches in brick still break the level horizon of the Campagna,
is one of the greatest works of this period.* Nero's was an age
of Greek curio-hunting; much of Rome was rebuilt after the
great fire in his reign and the Golden House must have been a
stupendous sight. But on his death the Romans made haste
to obliterate all traces of his work. The Flavian epoch was
the culminating-point of Roman art. Vespasian destroyed
Nero's Golden House and restored the Capitol. He and his
sons built the baths of Titus, the Arch of Titus f with the
celebrated Jewish relief, and the mighty Flavian Amphitheatre,
the Colosseum. J This was built in the style already noticed in
the theatre of Marcellus, namely, with the three Greek orders of
architecture, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, adorning the three
stories of the fagade ; but here, as so often, the Greek fagade
is a mere shell to hide the solid Roman masonry of which
the building is really constructed. It is noteworthy that
the monuments of this |age refute the historians who allege
among Domitian's other sins that he tried to destroy the works
and the memory of Titus, his more popular brother. In the
technical language of Wickhoff, this Flavian Age shows us
" illusionism " at its height in art. Under Trajan, and in his
famous column, the art of continuous narration in low relief is
fully developed.§ Hadrian, the cultured, travelling Philhellene,
encouraged a reversion to the classical traditions of Greek art.
The art of his period was profoundly influenced by the type of
Antinous, a beautiful youth beloved by the emperor, whose
romantic death by drowning in the Nile made a powerful
impression upon the whole Roman world, because he was
believed to have sacrificed his life for his emperor's in obedience
to an oracle. This type is preserved for us in many forms, but
* Plate 70. f plate 71. Fig- l • I Plate 72. § Plate 73.
293
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
most notably in the colossal Mondragore bust in the Louvre*
and the bas-relief in the Villa Albani.f His features were
utilised to represent all the young male gods on Olympus. In
their tragic beauty we see a mirror of Greece tinged by the
Orient, as if Dionysus had wedded Isis and this were the off-
spring. The Antonine period, as exhibited on the panels in the
Palazzo dei Conservatori, is gifted with immense technical
fluency and, as Mrs. Strong remarks, a new spiritual serious-
ness. As compositions they are superb, but the weakness of
expression in the face of Marcus Aurelius himself quite spoils
their effect for some spectators.J
Architecture was still mainly designed in the three Greek
modes variously combined, in spite of the fact that Rome had
progressed far beyond Greek limits in constructional ability.
Roman builders could manage a roof-span far in excess of the
Greeks. The Roman arch gave a strength in concrete vaulting
which expensive marble was unable to attain. Roman brick-
work denuded of the marble incrustations which generally
covered it of old is probably more impressive in its ruins than
it was when it was draped with Hellenism, and, to me at least,
remains like the aqueduct at Pont du Gard § and the Bridge of
Alcantara 1 1 seem truer witnesses of the grandeur of Rome than
all the marbles in all the museums. The celebrated Castle of
St. Angelo, which still keeps watch and ward over the Tiber, is
nothing but the core of Hadrian's tomb — the Moles Hadriani
— once clad in a vestment of Greek marbles and covered with
Greek ornament.^ The Pantheon, in spite of the inscription
which ascribes it to Agrippa, is proved by the marks on its
bricks to be a restoration of Hadrian's time. It is indeed a
superb example of vaulting and a miracle of construction.
The plan is that of a dome so constructed that if the sphere
were complete it would rest upon the earth. The magnificent
interior has lost little of its ancient splendour.**
For temple architecture, although the Romans had adopted
* Plate 75, Fig. i. t Plate 76. % Plate 77. § Plate 29.
|| Plate 81. IT Plate 82. ** Plate 45.
294
q u
Brogi
PLATE LXXXVII. POMPEII: HOUSE OF THE VETTII
CUPID FRESCOES
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
the forms of Greek art they had wholly deserted the spirit of
austere self-restraint upon which that art had rested. Thus
they readily adopted the luxuriance of the East when it came
to hand. In the splendid ruins of Heliopolis (Ba'albek) and
Moles Hadriani : restored
Palmyra we see a riotous luxuriance of ornament which would
have shocked the religious sense of Ictinus, but which fitly
enshrined the ritual and mysteries of the Sungod. This craze
for the colossal would have made the reverential Greeks
tremble in fear of provoking the Nemesis of a jealous Heaven,
but in its ruins it has left us superb and awful reminders of the
riches and grandeur of its authors, and of the end of all riches
and grandeur.
In domestic building the Romans had almost as little
regard as the Greeks for the exterior elevation of their villas
and palaces. The Roman gentleman still made it his favourite
hobby to collect villas, and Pliny had almost as many as
Cicero. But the main idea of the villa was comfort, and the
295
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
main idea of Roman comfort was coolness, quiet, and beauti-
ful scenery. Thus the wealthy man's house consisted of a
series of marble courts and cloisters spread over the ground
regardless of space. Landscape and landscape-gardening
were the most charming features. The Roman appreciated
the scenery of Como or Sirmione, Tivoli or Naples quite as
keenly as the tourist of to-day. He thought much of fresh air
and good water. Nearly all Roman gentlemen were agreed in
considering Rome itself, with its smells, its noise, and its
perils by fire, as a pestilent place of abode, and they gladly fled
to their country estates at Prseneste or Baiae. Hadrian's villa
at Tivoli * included reproductions of many famous buildings
which he had seen and admired on his travels. The decoration of
these villas encouraged two minor arts which figure prominently
among their remains. The floors were commonly adorned with
marble mosaic, of which we still have some charming examples, f
The interior walls were incrusted either with marble, in the
wealthier houses, or stuccoed and painted. Hence, it results
that the Art of Painting is represented to us almost solely by
mosaics, wall-frescoes, J and a few portraits on Egyptian mummy-
cases. Nothing remains of the great masters of antiquity,
Polygnotus, Zeuxis, and Apelles. But there maybe faint echoes
of their work on the frescoes of Pompeii executed by unnamed
decorators. Even so there is great charm in much of this
work. Professor Mau, the great authority on Pompeii, has
distinguished four successive phases of painting in that city.
At first the aim was to imitate the marble slabs used to cover
the walls of the rich man's house. Then growing bolder the
painter imitates various forms of architectural treatment
dividing up his wall space into panels and portraying cornices,
columns, pilasters, and so forth. This is roughly the style of
the first century B.C., and it is found in the so-called house of
Livia on the Palatine Hill at Rome.§ The third style, which
Mau terms the "ornate," was prevalent until about A.D. 50.
* Plate 83. •(• Plate 84.
I Plate 85. § Plate 89.
296
PLATE I.XXXVIII. FRESCO OF THE SACRIFICE OF II'lIl'lEMA
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
The architectural features now make no pretence at illusion.
The columns have become mere bands of colour, and there is
profuse ornament everywhere. The colours are somewhat cold.
The fourth or "intricate" style once more emphasises the
architectural character of the decoration, but the patterns are
too intricate to present'any appearance of reality. The whole
wall space shows a riot of fantastic ornament often extremely
graceful and effective. Flying goddesses and cupids impart a
sense of airy lightness, and floral forms festoon themselves in
charming curves. The pictures are smaller and the spaces
wider. No more pleasing treatment of the interior walls of a
house has ever been devised, at any rate for warm climates.
The destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D.
79 brings the history of ancient painting to a premature
close.* The subjects of the pictures are almost exclusively
mythological.
The minor arts of the jeweller, the gem-engraver, the gold-
smith reach a high state of technical perfection, but they do
not improve in spirit or artistic feeling with the progress of the
ages. Much of the furniture found at Pompeii and Herculaneum,
especially the bronze- work, f exhibits most graceful forms, always
Greek in inspiration.
LAW
The greatest intellectual achievement of the Roman people
was in the domain of law. The spiritual endowment of the
typical Roman included all the qualities of the lawyer — a sense
of equity that was quite devoid of sentimentalism, an instinct
for order, discipline, and business, a language of great clarity
and precision, and above all, a devotion to ceremonies and
formulae which sternly rejected abstract casuistry. Their law
took its rise in a series of religious formulae known only to
priests and to the king as chief priest. The Twelve Tables put
some of the most ancient principles into words, and partly from
their use as a text-book of education, were regarded almost with
* Plates 87, 88,90. f Plate 91.
297
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
as much veneration as the Two Tables of Moses. They were,
in fact, sometimes considered as the sole fountain of juris-
prudence, or at any rate as the sole code of written law. The
legislative enactments of the State were on a far lower plane
and no ancient people ever considered its legislature capable of
turning out a daily quota of legislation as modern parliaments
are supposed to do. In the main the fabric of Roman juris-
prudence consisted of " case law " made by the judges on the
tribunals. The Praetor Urbanus made the Civil Law of Rome,
and this became permanent by means of the system of Per-
petual Edicts. Religion continued to control the international
law of the Roman world, an affair of ceremonies in the hands
of the priestly college of heralds — the jus fetiale. But, mean-
while, the pr&tor peregrinus who had to decide cases between
non-citizens was gradually accumulating a body of law, wrongly
termed international, in the jus gentium. It was observed
that there was a great deal in common between the various
codes of the Italian and other Mediterranean States, and this
was put together in the foreign praetor's edict. The more
philosophical jurists, inspired with the Stoic doctrines about
following nature, evolved the theory that this common element
of various nations was nothing but the Natural Law, jus
natures. It was a fruitful error, and it lies at the base of
much of the modern "international law" as expounded by
Grotius and other seventeenth-century jurists.
The Civil Law of Rome was in the main, then, a series of
precedents handed down by praetor to praetor from times beyond
record. To it was added a large body of " counsel's opinions "
which drew their validity largely from the eminence of their
authors. It was Hadrian who set about the systematisation of
these. He organised the jurisprudentes into a regular pro-
fession. He appointed his " counsellors " from the leading
barristers of the day, and he gave to the whole body of res-
ponsa prudentium, "the opinions of the learned," the validity
of statutory law. The justice and precision of the civil law
was the most attractive feature of Roman civilisation to the
298
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
barbarian world. Gallic and British communities made haste
to learn Latin in order that they might gain the " Latin right"
which admitted them to the privilege of enjoying Roman
law. In A.D. 212, Caracalla, who did little else to deserve
the gratitude of posterity, uttered a single edict called the
" Antonine Constitution " which admitted the whole empire to
the privileges of Roman citizenship. Now a single code ran
throughout the whole Western world. Hadrian had set his
most distinguished lawyers, under the leadership of Salvius
Julianus, to codify the "perpetual edict" of the praetors. It
was under the Antonines that some citizen from the East, who is
only known to us by the common praenomen of Gaius, wrote
those learned " Institutes of Roman Law " which are still the
nursery of our lawyers. But it was the great Eastern emperor
Justinian (A.D. 527-565) who codified the whole body of civil
law in a series of immense documents. Roman law had already
conquered its barbarian conquerors, the Goths, and almost
every European legal system except our own is based upon
that ancient law which arose from the Twelve Tables and the
praetor's edict. The canon law of the Church was Roman law
in its essence.
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
Much attention has been paid in recent years to the religious
development of the Romans under the Empire, and to the
momentous conflict of religions which was going on from the
age of Hadrian until the final triumph of Christianity.
Humanly speaking, it was "touch and go" between several
religions competing for the vacant place in the faith of the
Empire, and at the last the strife was practically narrowed
down to a duel between two oriental monotheistic systems,
Mithraism * and Christianity. The subject is too vast for any-
thing like adequate treatment here. But I would emphasise
one point of view which is often overlooked.
The Roman state is too often regarded merely as the enemy
* Plate 92.
299
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
and persecutor of the Christian religion. It is forgotten how
large a share Rome may claim in its establishment. Not only
did the Romans discover Christianity, but they organised it
and sent it forth conquering and to conquer in the wake of the
legions. It is not a case of a wicked and corrupt people
suddenly converted in the midst of its sins. On the contrary
it is easy to show that the thinkers of the Roman Empire were
tending towards philosophic and religious ideas which made
them ready to accept with astonishing rapidity both the ethical
teaching and the theological revelations of the Son of God.
It is unnecessary to remind the modern reader how large a part
the Greek philosophy of Stoicism with its Roman modifications
had played in shaping the thoughts of one Roman citizen, Paul
of Tarsus. Philo, the Alexandrian Platonist, had developed
a doctrine of the Divine Logos, which profoundly influenced
the philosophy of the fourth Evangelist, and through him the
whole course of Christian teaching.
The Romans may have added little to abstract philosophy
or to metaphysics, but they made the somewhat barren abstrac-
tions of Zeno the Stoic into something more than a philosophy,
into a faith which had a power to influence conduct far beyond
the power of the State system of half-Greek Olympian Gods.
If the power and the sincerity of a religion may be tested
rather by its martyrs than by its proselytes, Stoicism had a
worthy record. Men like Thrasea Paetus, Helvidius Priscus, and
Barea Soranus were facing the tyrant's frown for the sake of
their Stoic sense of duty, just as truly as Peter and Polycarp.
The attitude of the Roman Government towards Christianity
has been too often explained to need more than a brief re-
capitulation. At first Christianity was confounded with
Judaism, which had already begun to make converts at Rome
without seeking for them. The Roman government was ex-
traordinarily tolerant towards creed, but it demanded an
external compliance with the Caesar-worship, which it was
imposing on the provinces as a test of loyalty. But the
Christians did not take the divine command "render unto
300
s
o
Q
O
t— i
5
H
O
a
o
t
x
i— i
X
§
£
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
Csesar the things that are Caesar's " to include scattering incense
on his altars. Too many of them had been brought up in the
punctilious exclusiveness of the Jewish tradition for them to
display on such points the laxity which is sometimes called
broad-mindedness. Even in the private intercourse of social
life the Christians were unpleasantly apt to insist upon their
scruples. The meat in the butchers' shops had often been
slain in sacrifice, and the Christian conscience revolted at
" meat offered to idols." The libation with which the wine-
cup started on its rounds was another offence to the tender
monotheistic conscience. These things made the Christians
unpopular. Their close associations, their secret meetings and
love-feasts, the communism which they practised, all aroused
the suspicions which are begotten of mystery. Lastly, their
conviction that the Second Coming and the Day of Judgment
were at hand made them ardent proselytes. It made them
utter prognostications of death and damnation to all around
them, and to see apocalyptic visions of the fall of the kingdoms
of this earth. Such prophecies were sometimes misunderstood
as involving treasonable designs. The first persecution under
Nero was largely the result of such suspicions.
But the official attitude of the permanent Roman Govern-
ment is probably revealed in the famous correspondence between
Pliny and his emperor, Trajan. Imperial Rome is not to set up
an inquisition. No man is to be punished for his faith, but if he
is accused to the governor and is obstinate in refusing to pay
the obeisance demanded by the state he is to be punished for
his contumacy. That is precisely the attitude which the most
humane and enlightened Christian states have adopted towards
heresy. Later, when the Faith grew in importance, and when
it even reached the point of soldiers refusing the military oaths,
occasional emperors, often the better emperors, strove to fight
against it. Then there were sometimes inquisitions and whole-
sale martyrdoms as under Decius and Diocletian. But no
martyrdom, however public or agonising, could quench the
faith of those who saw the heavens opening and the Angels of
301
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
God descending with their crowns of glory. The publicity of
the scenes and the constancy of the victims increased, as usual,
the number of the converts. Foolish magistrates sought to
encounter obstinacy with further severity, and the Faith only
grew the more abundantly. It was not so much his personal
conversion — for that was tardy and half-hearted — as the
motive of policy to secure an advantage over Maxentius, which
induced Constantine to promulgate the Edict of Milan in 313,
by which toleration was extended to the Christian faith through-
out the Roman Empire.
We must not be surprised that the best emperors, including
the philosopher and saint, Marcus Aurelius, were the most
bitterly hostile to Christianity. That is human nature. Stoic
philosophers were teaching very much in common with
Christian philosophy, but that renders it all the less likely that
Stoic philosophers should be among the converts. Neverthe-
less Christian doctrine, especially in the Greece-Jewish com-
munities of Asia Minor, was falling on prepared soil. The Stoic
paradoxes had undoubtedly prepared the way for the Christian
paradoxes. The doctrines of humility and asceticism were a
commonplace of the Cynics. " No Cross, no Crown," " He
who would save his life must lose it " — such sayings as these
would gain immediate assent from thoughtful Romans.
Epictetus, a heathen slave of Domitian's day, wrote his answer
to the tyrant : " No man hath power over me. I have been
set free by God. I know His Commandments ; henceforth no
man can lead me captive." The Stoics were daily teaching
that it is hard for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of
God. This is the creed of Marcus Aurelius : " To venerate
the gods and bless them, and to do good to men, and to
practise tolerance and self-restraint." The horrors of the
amphitheatre are one side of imperial society. But on the
other side Musonius Rufus, a Stoic who stood high in the
favour of Vespasian and Titus, went among the soldiers to
preach against militarism. Slave-drivers as the Romans were,
they were beginning to feel a sense of the brotherhood of man.
302
3 o "
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
Seneca was calling the slaves " humble friends." " Man is a holy
thing to man," he says ; and such teaching was reflected even
in the legislation of the day. Juvenal pleads passionately for
kindness to slaves and for moral purity in the home. Seneca
not only feels that men are brothers, but that God is the
Father of us all. We have seen how public charity was
finding expression in the alimenta and the free schools. " Love
them that hate you" would not strike the Romans of the
second century as anything more than a strong expression of
the truth they had already begun to recognise. Thus the
practical side of Christian ethics found its harmonies in
the conduct as well as the theory of the more enlightened
pagans. Peace and humanitarianism were in the air of the
Antonine Age.
As for religious dogma the whole tendency of thought was
towards monotheism. "God is a Spirit" would find an
instant acquiescence among educated Romans, even though
they frequented the temples of a hundred different gods.
Philosophy among Greeks and Romans alike had always been
monotheistic. On the subject of immortality the philosophers
were divided. Marcus Aurelius and Seneca are on the whole
not hopeful. Probably the beliefs of the common folk — as
testified in the epitaphs of their cemeteries — were equally
divided. The laconic epitaph : " I was not, I was : I am not,
I care not," is common. But other epitaphs equally common
express the hope of reunions in the other world or even of
being " received among the number of the gods." But on the
whole the commonest view of Death was as a happy release
and an unending sleep. It was the immediate hope of eternal
bliss, which was the greatest thing that Christianity had to
offer to the pagan world.
Rome, then, was in many ways prepared for the reception
of Christianity, whose doctrines found an echo in the aspirations
of the day. She did much to give to Christian theology its
Western form, and of course the ritual and practice of the
Roman Church was in many ways merely a continuation of old
303
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
pagan rites and ceremonies. Ancient deities became Christian
saints without change of rite or cult; images were often adapted
and even names scarcely altered. But, in fact, the whole con-
ception of that mighty Church which conquered the world,
including the barbarian invaders, was the offspring of the
Roman political system. It was her genius for statecraft which
made Rome the Eternal City. In one form or another she has
governed the world for twenty centuries.
304
PLATE XCI. BRONZE SACRIFICIAL TRIPOD
Hro.fi
EPILOGUE
Musae quid facimus ? ri <evaia-iv tv An-to-tv
udimus dtppaSlr/friv iv T\jiari •yrjpaa-KovTes ;
SavroviKois campouriv, onrj <pvos &arircTov iirrlv,
erramus gelido-rpo/«/>oi rigidique poetse.
Ausomus.
SHOULD have preferred to leave the Roman world at
the height of its grandeur, when the whole vast terri-
tory was enjoying prosperity, if not peace, under the
virtuous and benevolent Antonines. In that way this
book would best create the true impression of Rome,
not as a lamentable failure, but as the conspicuous
success which it assuredly was. But as the reader
will probably follow the old Greek maxim and
desire to see the end before recording a judgment,
a few pages are added containing a very brief
summary of the closing scenes. It is necessary to
notice that even the closing scenes cover a period
of two hundred years, and that this progress is not
even yet entirely downhill. They include good and
bad reigns, periods of prosperity as well as disaster.
Here again the impression of pessimism which we get from
reading the account of the Empire is due to the historians as
much as to the history. Lampridius and the other writers of
the Augustan History are small-minded writers who label the
various princes as good or bad largely according to their
treatment of the senate. The Augustan historians are trained
in the school of Suetonius, they dwell upon gossip and can
form no large political judgments. Very little of the gossip is
authentic. If they have decided to revile an emperor they
u 305
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
repeat the scandals narrated by Suetonius about Tiberius or
Nero. It is only in their accounts of military action that they
can be trusted, and this fact creates a false preponderance of
warfare in the annals of the period.
The succession to the imperial throne continued to be the
weak point of the whole system. The throne itself passed through
unspeakable degradations. The guards who murdered Pertinax
formally put the succession up to auction in the praetorian camp.
Septimius Severus (193-198) gave a brief respite of strong
government which almost destroyed the fiction of senatorial
authority, for Severus held the proconsular power even over
Rome and Italy. Caracalla was probably the worst of all the
emperors in personal vice and brutality, but he was the author
of that famous decree which conferred the citizenship on all the
western provinces. In Elagabalus (218-222) Rome had for
master the vile and effeminate priest of the Sungod, who
brought the fetish-stone of Emesa into the city and attempted
to make all the gods bow down to it. Alexander Severus was
a blameless prince, and Maximin the Thracian drove the
barbarians back behind the Unities of the Rhine and Danube.
After the Gordians the senate enjoyed for a brief space the
opportunity of governing Rome through their nominee
Pupienus, but the disorders of the period may be gauged from
the fact that in the eighteen years following Alexander Severus,
who died in 235, twelve persons wore the purple. Then
Gallienus assumed it, having for his colleague that Valerian
who was the first of Roman emperors to be taken prisoner by
the enemy. Strange and horrible tales hung about his
mysterious fate when taken captive by Shapur, the Persian
king. In the latter years of Gallienus the Empire was practi-
cally divided, for his rebellious general Postumus was recognised
as emperor throughout Gaul, Spain, and Britain. In this
period, too, Palmyra rose into independent power as the meeting-
place of the caravan routes across the Syrian plains. Under
the famous Queen Zenobia it practically ruled over the eastern
parts of the Empire, and its splendid ruins prove its wealth and
306
EPILOGUE
magnificence. Gallienus then almost allowed the Empire to
disintegrate under his feeble grasp, but his successor Claudius
Gothicus (268) was a man and a soldier. He smote the Goths
and would have restored the Empire in full, but the plague,
which had never wholly disappeared since the time of Marcus
Aurelius, carried him off in the third year of his reign. The task
was left for Aurelian, that Pannonian peasant whose brilliant
generalship hurled back the enemy on every side, while his
statesmanship restored the authority of the emperor and even
the financial credit of the Empire. The mighty wall with
which he surrounded Rome is, however, a sad testimony of the
dark days upon which the imperial city had fallen. The
Palmyrene kingdom was defeated and the rich city plundered.
The rebel Empire of the Gauls was destroyed for ever. The
grandest triumph ever witnessed in Rome was that of Aurelian
in 274. It is thus described by Vopiscus :
"There were three royal chariots. One was that of
Odenathus, brilliant with jewellery in gold, silver, and gems;
the second, similarly constructed, was the gift of the Persian
king to Aurelian ; the third was the design of Zenobia herself,
who hoped to visit Rome in it. Wherein she was not deceived,
for she entered the city in it after her defeat. There was
another chariot yoked to four stags, which is said to have
belonged to the king of the Goths. On this Aurelian rode to
the Capitol, there to sacrifice the stags which he had vowed to
Jupiter the Highest and Mightiest. Twenty elephants went
before, tamed beasts of Libya and two hundred different beasts
from Palestine, which Aurelian immediately presented to
private individuals in order that the treasury might not be
burdened with their maintenance. Four tigers, giraffes, elks,
and other creatures were led in procession. Eight hundred
pairs of gladiators, as well as captives from the barbarian
tribes, Blemyes, Axiomitae, Arabs, Eudsemones, Ludians,
Bactrians, Hiberi, Saracens, Persians, all with their various
treasures; Goths, Alani, Roxolani, Sarmatians, Franks, Suevi,
Vandals, Germans advanced as captives with their hands
bound. Among them also were the Palmyrene chiefs, who
survived, and the Egyptian rebels. Ten women whom Aurelian
had taken fighting in male attire among the Goths were in the
307
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
procession, while many of these ' Amazons ' had been slain.
In front of each contingent a placard bearing the name of the
tribe was carried. Among them was Tetricus (the ' emperor '
of the Gallic Empire) in a scarlet cloak, a yellow tunic, and
Gallic breeches. There walked Zenobia too, laden with jewels
and chained with gold chains which others carried. In front
of the conquered princes their crowns were borne along labelled
with their names. And next the Roman People followed, the
banners of the guilds and camps, the mailed soldiers, the royal
spoils, the whole army and the senate (although it was saddened
to see that some members of its body were among the captives)
added much to the splendour of the show. It was not until
the ninth hour that the Capitol was reached, and the palace
much later."
Aurelian endeavoured to establish Mithraism as the state
religion, and earned the gratitude of the vulgar by supple-
menting the free supply of corn with a daily ration of pork.
Oil and salt were given gratuitously, and he even prepared
to supply free wine. The three emperors who succeeded
Aurelian, Tacitus, Probus, and Carus, were men of good
character, and the first two were, once more, the nominees
of the senate.
Throughout this troubled age the causes of confusion were
twofold. On the one hand the Empire itself was so vast and
scattered that it tended now to fall to pieces of its own
momentum, as the seedbox opens to scatter its seeds. Britain,
Gaul, Germany, Palmyra — each in its turn began to feel a
unity of its own. Rome was far away, and the government
was often weak and negligent. Here was an opportunity for
the local generals to carve out thrones for themselves. While
the emperor hurried this way and that fresh rebellions broke
out in his rear. It was no one's fault in particular. The
world-state was impossible in theory as in practice. It was
only possible while the provinces were barbarian. When they
became civilised and self-conscious they were bound to feel
their natural unity.
In the second place, the barbarians were now grown to full
308
EPILOGUE
stature. They were no longer quarrelsome tribes which could
be turned against one another by adroit statecraft, but nations
much less barbarous than of old, with some organisation and a
purpose above that of mere plunder. No artificial ramparts
could hold them. It is very doubtful whether even the legions
of Rome at their best could have resisted these repeated
assaults on all sides. The first great inroad across the Danube
took place in the reign of M. Aurelius. It was crushed, as the
column of that emperor depicts, and Sarmatia and Mar-
comannia were added as short-lived provinces. It is in the
third century that we begin to hear of the greater barbarian
nations, or groups of tribes, of the Alemanni and the Suevi, the
Franks, the Saxons, the Goths, and the Vandals. Battle after
battle was fought and triumph after triumph won against them,
but they still pressed on. The weaker emperors essayed to
buy them with gold, the wiser with land, the craftier set them
to slay one another, but still they moved forward resistlessly,
wave after wave, like the sea. This again was nobody's fault.
It may have been the movement of Tartar savages in the Far
East which set the Wandering of the Nations in motion.
Whatever it was, all eastern and northern Europe was seething
with restless movement and the tide rolled on irresistibly
against the bulwarks of civilisation. Triumphs as great and
glorious as those of Scipio and Marius were gained by Roman
armies even in the fourth century. But the enemy was ubiquitous,
the task impossible.
It is, however, true that those bulwarks were weaker than
they should have been, partly by reason of the internal dis-
organisation caused by perpetual struggles for the succession,
and partly through certain visible errors in Roman statesman-
ship. For one thing, the spirit of peace and humanity which
was ripening in the securer central parts of the Empire had
probably impaired its instincts of defence. The modern world
is trying just now to believe that you can retain the power of
defence when you have given up all thoughts of aggression.
It may be so. The Roman world failed in the attempt.
309
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
Rome's statesmen were now no longer soldiers, but lawyers
and financiers. Even the prefects of the praetorian guard were
lawyers. The army was a profession apart. Moreover, even
the army had become so civilised that it had lost many of its
martial qualities. Hadrian more than any other ruler is
responsible for allowing the cannabce or "booths" which had
sprung up around the camps to grow into towns and even
cities. The legions were now permanently established in their
quarters, the soldiers married wives and occupied their leisure in
business or husbandry. Hadrian it was, too, who in his large
cosmopolitan spirit had introduced many and doubtless useful
barbarian methods of fighting, so that the old Roman military
traditions had fallen into desuetude. A legion was now no
better than its auxiliaries. The auxiliaries were often barbarians
and soon the legions themselves became completely barbarised.
It was only a step further when barbarians were recruited in
tribes to fight Rome's battles under their own commanders.
Secondly, the whole Roman world was being slowly strangled
with good intentions. The bureaucracy had grown so highly
organised and efficient, so nicely ordered through its various
grades of official life, that everybody walked in leading-strings
to the music of official proclamations. Paternalism regulated
everything with its watchful and benignant eye. The triumph
of the system may be seen in the famous Edict of Prices issued
by Diocletian in A.D. 301. Here we find scheduled a maximum
price for every possible commodity of trade and a maximum
wage for every kind of service. Death is the penalty for any
trader who asks, or any purchaser who pays a higher price.
No difference of locality or season is permitted. Trade is for-
bidden to fluctuate under penalty of death. This delightful
scheme, which was engraved on stone in every market in
Europe, was evidently the product of a highly efficient Board
of Trade, which had sat late of nights over the study of statistics
and political economy. Benevolent officials of this type
swarmed all over the empire, spying and reporting on one
another as well as on the general public.
310
EPILOGUE
The same system of blear-eyed officialism had found a still
more ingenious method of throttling the society which it was
endeavouring to nurse back into infancy. It was under
Severus Alexander (about A.D. 230) that the various collegia
or guilds were incorporated by charter, so that every industry
whatever became a close corporation. This rendered the task
of administration much simpler. It meant that every human
occupation became hereditary. There was, for example, a guild
of the coloni or tillers of the soil. The most benevolent of the
emperors, Marcus Aurelius and the two Severi, had planted
barbarians on Roman soil under condition of military service in
lieu of rent. This service became hereditary also. Before long
each piece of ground had to supply a recruit. The decuriones,
moreover, or municipal senators, who had once been the
honoured magistrates of their townships, also became a caste.
As they were made responsible for the collection of property
tax in their boroughs, and as wealth began to decline and
taxation to increase, they were reduced to a condition of penury
and misery. The exemption from taxation of whole classes of
society, such as the soldiers and eventually the Christian
clergy, added to their burdens. Then, since many of them
attempted to evade the distresses entailed upon their rank by
joining the army or even selling themselves into slavery, a
decree was issued which made their office hereditary. It
became a form of punishment to enrol an offender among these
curiales. A decree of Constantine bound all the tillers of the
soil in hereditary bondage for ever. In these ways Roman
society fell into stagnation. Since the progress of the
Manchurian Empire in China proceeded on very similar lines,
it looks as if the benevolent despotism engendered by highly
centralised government of very large areas was one of the
methods by which Providence is accustomed to bring great
empires low.
At the close of the third century Diocletian endeavoured
to save the state by a bold revolution. He swept away the
h ollow pretence of republicanism and frankly surrounded the
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
throne with every circumstance of majesty and ceremony.
The free access which had generally been granted by the most
despotic princes was replaced by an elaborate system of inter-
mediaries. To meet the obvious needs of devolution in
government, as well as to stop the incessant struggles for the
succession, he invented an ingenious division of responsibility.
Henceforth there were to be two Augusti, one taking the East
and one the West. The Empire was not actually divided, for
the joint writ of the two colleagues was to run all over it.
Moreover each Augustus was to have a junior colleague, a
" Caesar," acting as his lieutenant and prepared to step into his
place. Ties of marriage were to unite all four into one close
family alliance. There were now one hundred and sixteen
provinces and Diocletian grouped them into thirteen " dioceses "
each under a "vicar," directly responsible to one of four
"praetorian praefects," who shared the administration of the
whole. The troops were no longer subject to the provincial
governors, but each army had a " Duke " (dux) of its own.
Each frontier — and these were still further fortified — was
under its own " Duke." At the same time steps were taken
to organise a central striking force — the comitatus of the
emperors. The four Prefectures and thirteen Dioceses were as
follows :
/Egypt ILLYRICUM (Macedonia I Italia
Oriens ( Dacia ITALIA I Ulyricum (after
ORIENS -<Pontus /"Gallia 1 Theodosius)
Asia GALLIARUM -I Hispania [Africa
\Thracia ^Britannia
Italy, it will be observed, has now definitely declined into the
status of a province among many, and Rome itself was not
sufficiently near the frontier armies to be a convenient capital.
Diocletian preferred to make his residence at Nicomedia. The
senate, as a necessary consequence, receded into the background,
and remained little more than a title of dignity. The emperor's
Consistory, a privy council composed of the heads of depart-
ments, took its place for practical purposes. The new hierarchy
312
z
Id
I
at
u
-
s
w
CJ
X
EPILOGUE
of officials rejoiced in barbaric titles which would have shocked
the ears of a genuine Roman.
Naturally these advances in the direction of more and
stronger government proved no alleviation of the woes which
sprang from too much supervision. The most visible sign of
decay was the decline of population which began to lay the
central parts of the Empire desolate, and this sprang not only
from economic burdens, but from racial decline. Money
became so debased and worthless that the world actually went
back to the system of barter.
Constantine signalised Diocletian's plan of dividing the
responsibility of government by founding a new capital at
Byzantium. His motives were probably mixed. In the first
place he would be free of the awkward republican traditions
which still kept reasserting themselves, and in the second place
Constantinople was a more central and a much more defensible
situation. But, more than all, in this new Rome he could
break away from the old religion. Constantine's plan for
restoring the tired and afflicted world was the adoption of
Christianity. The Decree of Milan (313) made Christianity
the official religion, though not the only religion, of the
Empire. It was already the religion of the court — ever since
Constantine had seen his famous vision of the Angel descending
from Heaven with the sign of the Cross and uttering the words
tv Tovrtf VIKO, — " Hoc signo vinces." Still half-pagan, the emperor
had made the Cross his mascot, and in the strength of it had
defeated his rival at the Milvian Bridge just outside Rome.*
Constantine himself was by no means a saint ; in murdering
kinsmen he was, in fact, among the worst of the emperors, but
unwittingly he saved the world by his conversion. Meanwhile
the extravagance with which he adorned his new city afflicted
the whole Empire with the burdens of fresh taxations.
The scheme of a divided Empire failed. After Theodosius
(395) the division became permanent. The Eastern throne
remained secure for another thousand years, protected by the
* See Plate 95, Fig. 2.
313
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
admirable strategic position of Constantinople. The contempt
with which it has hitherto been treated by historians is now
beginning to break down, and it is seen that the Byzantine
Empire not only stood as the bulwark for the West against the
East but preserved for us the inestimable treasures of Greek
intellect. The Roman tradition, now inextricably mingled
with the Greek, lingered on there unchanged, even to the very
chariot-races which still threw society into a ferment. To this
day the inhabitants of Greece and Roumania distinguish them-
selves from their oriental neighbours by the proud title of
" Romans."
But in the West a series of phantoms succeeded one
another upon the throne. The floodgates of the Rhine and
Danube frontiers broke down completely and the new nations
streamed into their heritage. Then it was found how truly
Constantine's policy had saved the world. Though the Goths
took and plundered Rome (410), they came in not as pagan
destroyers, but as Christian immigrants, and it was Gothic
generals and Gothic armies who saved Europe from destruc-
tion. About 447 the Mongolian Huns under their terrible
Attila came riding into western Europe from the steppes of
Russia. They crossed the Rhine half a million strong,
destroying and burning as they came. The Roman emperor's
sister Honoria proposed marriage to Attila, and the proud
barbarian offered her a place in his harem if she would bring
half the Western Empire as her dowry. The Roman general
Aetius with a half-barbarian army in alliance with the Visigoths
checked them at "The Battle of Chalons" and the peril drifted
away. Aetius who had saved Rome was stabbed by his
ungrateful emperor.
The Vandals had already overrun Spain and streamed
across to Africa, whence they issued forth to make a second
sack of Rome. Britain had been deserted rather by the choice
of its army than by command of any emperor, and left a prey
to the pagans of the north in 406. Italy itself was wholly in
the hands of the barbarians, who lived on terms of apparent
3H
PLATE XCIV. THE BARBERINI IVORY
EPILOGUE
equality with the Romans. Puppets wore the imperial purple
and did the behests of barbarian "Patricians," Ricimer the
Suevian, Gundobald his nephew, and finally Odoacer, a tribeless
barbarian from the north. By this time the Western Empire
was dismembered for ever, and western Europe was merely a
series of barbarian principalities. In 476 Odoacer removed
the last puppet-emperor of Rome, who bore the significant
name of Romulus Augustulus. The seat of the Western
Empire had long been removed from the twice-sacked city of
Rome, and the later princes had ruled from Ravenna, where
the little mausoleum of the Empress Placidia, sister of Honorius,
still stands as a type of the shrunken glories of the last
successors of Augustus.*
In theory the Western Empire did not come to an end in
476. The Eastern emperors now claimed authority over the
whole Roman world and exercised it so far as they could
obtain obedience. Strong Caesars like Justinian made their
rule respected far and wide. Geographically and politically,
the West had now begun its mediaeval existence as a congeries
of small kingdoms generally of uncertain extent.
But in a far truer sense Rome continued to rule the world
as before. Her two great legacies, the Roman Law and the
Roman Church, ruled it as completely as ever the legions had
done. Even in politics, the grand conception of the Christian
Republic, Church and State in one, with the Pope as the
successor of St. Peter bearing the keys of Heaven and Hell,
while the emperor as the successor of Augustus wielded its
sword, continued for another thousand years to dominate
Europe. It was under the aegis of this great idea that the
young nations grew up and came into their own.
Thus the true history of Rome from this point is the history
of the Church, and this is no place to relate it. But it may
be contended here that the visible Church was as truly a
creation of the Roman spirit as was the Empire itself. Rome
had seized upon the teaching of One who lived in poverty
* Plate 93.
315
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
and obscurity among slaves and outcasts, who preached against
worldliness, formality, and ambition, who sent out His disciples
to beg their way, and out of this, with her wonderful genius
for government, she had created a powerful monarchy which
could humble kings, and an organised ecclesiastical state which
spread like a network over the earth and tamed the fury of the
barbarians.
In the same way the culture of these latter days is to be
found in Church History. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom,
and Tertullian are its representative writers and thinkers more
truly than Ausonius or Claudian. Except for the Arch of
Constantine,* which was mainly compiled out of earlier remains,
its Art is to be found in the sacred mosaics of Constantinople
or Torcello, or in the Byzantine ivories such as the famous
Barberini panel, showing Constantine as the establisher of the
Christian Faith.f Architecture continues to show remarkable
developments, and in the wonderful palace which Diocletian
constructed for his retirement at Spalato on the Dalmatian
coast there are new combinations of the Roman arch with the
Greek columns which are full of promise for the birth of Gothic
art.J The earliest Christian churches designed on the plan of
a Greek cross, with a dome covering the intersection of nave
and transepts, is derived from Asia Minor and bears traces of
the oriental influence which is so powerful in Byzantine Art.
* Plate 71, Fig. 2.
t Plate 94.
I Plate 95, Fig. i.
316
3 i
FIG. I. THE PALACE OF DIOCLETIAN, SPALATO
Anderson
FIG. 2. RELIEF FROM THE AKCH OF CONSTANTINE : THE BATTLE OF THE MILVIAN BRIDGE
PLATE XCV
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY
YEAR
B.C.
753
S°8
494
480
474
45°
387
367
35'
348
343
to
266
321
DOMESTIC EVENTS
Legendary date of the foundation of
Rome
Legendary date of the expulsion of
Tarquin, and establishment of the
Republic
Legendary date of the Etruscan in-
vasion under Lars Porsena
Legendary date of the First Secession
of the Plebeians
EXTERNAL EVENTS
Legendary date of the Twelve Tables
Conquest of Rome by the Gauls
Licinian Laws : ( i ) forbid large hold-
ings of public land; (2) compel
landlords to employ a certain pro-
portion of free labour
Possibly authentic date of first
treaty between Rome and
the Latins, drawn up by Sp.
Cassius
Defeat of the Etruscans by
Syracuse
312 Censorship of Appius Claudius in-
cluding ( i) publication of the laws ;
(2) construction of Via Claudia
281
to
275
Conquest of S. Etruria by Rome.
Caere becomes the first
civitas sine suffragio
First treaty of commerce be-
tween Rome and Carthage
Samnite Wars, involving sub-
jugation of the Latins, and
eventually of all Central Italy
Great defeat of the Romans at
the Caudine Pass
War with Tarentum and Pyr-
rhus involving conquest of
South Italy
317
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY
YEAR DOMESTIC EVENTS EXTERNAL EVENTS
B.C.
268 First coinage of silver
264 First Punic War, involving con-
to quest of Sicily, Sardinia, and
24* Corsica — first transmarine
provinces
264 First gladiatorial games at Rome.
240 Livius Andronicus. Beginning of
Roman literature
222 Defeat of the Cisalpine Gauls
220 Via Flaminia to Ariminum
218 Second Punic War
to
201
218 Lex Claudia forbids Senators to
engage in commerce
216 Romans severely defeated at
Cannae
205 Introduction of Phrygian worship of
Magna Mater
202 Victory of Scipio at Zama
201 Peace with Carthage involving
cession of Spain
200 Second Macedonian War
to
194
1 96 Flamininus proclaims the liberty
of Greece
J90 Defeat of Antiochus the Great
of Syria at Magnesia
186 7000 Romans condemned for the
Bacchic orgies
184 Censorship of Cato the Elder. Death
of Plautus. Basilica of Cato con-
structed
I7I Third Macedonian War. Egypt
*° accepts Roman suzerainty
168
165 1000 Greeks, including Polybius the
historian, brought to Italy as host-
ages
161 Greek orators and philosophers ex-
pelled (vainly)
1 60 Adelphi of Terence performed
Z48 Macedonia becomes a province
X46 On destruction of Carthage,
Africa becomes a province
Great influx of Greek Art Corinth destroyed
318
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY
YEAR DOMESTIC EVENTS EXTERNAL EVENTS
B.C.
133 Tribunate and agrarian programme of Kingdom of Attalus bequeathed
Tiberius Gracchus to Rome, becomes province
of Asia
123 Tribunate and agrarian programme of
Gaius Gracchus. Establishment of
the Equites as a political power
121 Province of Gallia Narbonensis,
f formed by conquest of S. Gaul
112 War with Jugurtha : triumph of
to Marius
106
113 Army reforms and political power of War with Cimbri and Teutons
to Marius
101
91 War against the Italian allies
(Social War)
88 Conquest of Rome by Sulla, and War with Mithradates of Pontus.
restoration of the Senate Massacre of Romans
87 Revolution of Cinna and Marius
with great massacre of nobles
82 Return of Sulla and proscription of Defeat of the Samnites at the
the democrats Colline Gate of Rome
8 1 Sulla dictator. Cornelian Laws im- Cisalpine Gaul becomes a pro-
prove the judicial system. Cicero's vince. Rome refuses^Egypt
first speech
78 Date of extant buildings at Rome (i)
the Tabularium; (2) the Temple
of Fortuna Virilis
75 Bithynia and Cyrene made pro-
vinces (both bequeathed to
Rome)
7 3 Insurrection of slaves under Spartacus
67 Pompeius defeats the pirates
63 Consulship of Cicero, who crushes Pompeius ends the Mithradatic
the conspiracy of Catiline War. New provinces organ-
ised : Cilicia, Bithynia with
Pontus, Syria, and Crete
60 Union of Pompeius, Csesar, and
Crassus, " the First Triumvirate "
59 Consulship of Caesar, and grant of
the province of Gaul
58 Banishment of Cicero. Theatre of Csesar defeats the Helvetians
Curio built
57 Recall of Cicero Caesar defeats the Nervii
56 Renewal of the " Triumvirate " at Caesar defeats the Veneti by
Lucca sea
55 Dedication of theatre of Pompeius Caesar invades Britain
319
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY
YEAR
B.C.
54
53
DOMESTIC EVENTS
S2
51
49
48
46
45
44
43
42
37
36
3°
29
28
320
Senate-house burnt in a riot. Pom-
peius passes laws against Caesar
Caesar begins the Civil War
Battle of Pharsalus, defeat of Pom-
peius
Final defeat of Pompeians at Thapsus
in Africa. Caesar dictator. Dedi-
cation of new Forum Julium, and
temple of Venus Genetrix
Caesar enlarges the Senate and regu-
lates the municipal constitutions
of the Italian towns
Assassination of Caesar. M. Antonius
in command of Rome. Cicero's
Philippics
Octavian, Caesar's heir, with the con-
suls defeats Antony at Mutina, and
is elected consul. Second Trium-
virate formed, Antony, Octavian,
and Lepidus. Proscription of
the tyrannicide party, including
Cicero
Battles of Philippi. Defeat of Brutus
and Cassius. Temple of Saturn
rebuilt
War at Perusia, in which Octavian
crushes the revolt of L. An-
tonius
Library of Pollio founded. Octavian
marries Livia
Sextus Pompeius defeated. Lepidus
deprived of his army
Publication of Horace's Epodes
Triumph of Caesar Octavianus
Census and restoration of Senate.
Dedication of temple and library
of Palatine Apollo : eighty-two
temples restored ^
EXTERNAL EVENTS
Second invasion of Britain
Defeat of Crassus by the Par-
thians. Caesar subdues the
Treveri, and crosses the
Rhine
Great revolt of Gaul under Ver-
cingetorix crushed at Alesia
Final subjugation of Gaul.
Cicero governor of Cilicia
Caesar regulates Egypt, leaving
Cleopatra as queen
M. Antonius with Cleopatra in
Egypt
Antony defeated in Parthia
Defeat of Antony and Cleopatra
at Actium by Octavian
Conquest of Egypt
Mcesia made a province
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY
YEAR DOMESTIC EVENTS EXTERNAL EVENTS
B.C.
27 " Restoration of the Republic " really Provinces divided between
the beginning of the Empire. Czesar and Senate. Caesar
Octavian receives the title of takes Spain, Gaul, Syria, and
Augustus. Pantheon of M. Agrippa keeps Egypt
built
23 Augustus resigns the consulship. Failure of expedition to Arabia
Death of Marcellus. Vergil's
jEneid, Horace's Odes, i, ii, iii
20 Augustus in Asia. Submission
of Parthians
1 9 Death of Vergil Conquest of North Spain
17 Julian " Laws of Morality." Secular
games. Horace as laureate. Augus-
tus adopts Gaius and Lucius his
grandsons
1 6 German invasion of Gaul. Defeat
of Lollius
1 3 Theatre of Marcellus built Drusus in Gaul for conquest of
Germany
1 2 Dedication of Ara Pacis Augustas
9 End of Livy's History Death of Drusus after four
campaigns in Germany
8 Death of Horace and Maecenas Tiberius in Germany.
4 Death of Herod. Probable date
of birth of Christ
2 Banishment of Julia
A.D.
2 Death of Lucius and mortal wounding
of Gaius. Tiberius adopted
4 Building of " Maison Carree " at Tiberius's annual campaigns in
Nismes Germany
6 Establishment of military chest at Judaea becomes a province (cen-
Rome. Temple of Castor rebuilt sus of Quirinius). Great re-
volt in Pannonia
8 Banishment of Ovid Subjection of Pannonia
9 Defeat of Varus by Arminius in
Germany
14 Death of Augustus. Succession of Revolt of Rhine and Danube
Tiberius. Political extinction of armies quelled by Germanicus
the comitia. Extension of law and Drusus
of treason and growth of informing
(delatio)
1 6 Germanicus defeats the Germans
under Arminius at Idistavisus
27 Tiberius retires to Capri. Sejanus
in command of Rome
X 321
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY
YEAR DOMESTIC EVENTS
A.D.
37 Gains Caesar (Caligula), murdered by
Praetorian guard
4 1 Claudius
54
55
61
64
68
68
to
69
69
70
79
81
86
96
96
98
Nero
Poisoning of Britannicus
Fire at Rome, and first persecution
of the Christians
EXTERNAL EVENTS
Futile expedition towards Britain
New provinces incorporated :
Mauretania, Lycia, Thracia
(46), and Judaea. Conquest
of Britain begun (43)
Year of the Four Emperors :
Galba, June-Jan. 69
Otho, Jan.-April
Vitellius, April-Dec.
Vespasian, " The Flavian Dynasty "
Erection of Colosseum, Arch of
Titus, and Baths of Titus
Titus. Eruption of Vesuvius. Hercu-
laneum buried in mud and Pompeii
in ashes. Death of Elder Pliny
Domitian
Murder of Domitian
Nerva, repealed law of treason and
reduced taxes
Trajan, built Forum Trajani, Basilica
Ulpia, and Column of Trajan
Revolt of Boadicea in Britain
Revolt of Vindex in Gaul and
Galba in Spain
118 Hadrian, built Moles Hadriani,
Temple of Venus and Rome,
Pantheon, Villa at Tivoli, and
Temple of Olympian Zeus at
Athens
138 Antoninus Pius, "The Antonine
Dynasty." Built Temple of
Antoninus and Faustina
322
Revolt of Batavians under
Civilis
Siege and destruction of Jeru-
salem
Progress of Agricola in Scotland.
Construction of Rhaetian limes
Wars against the Dacians
(101-102) First Dacian War.
(105-107) Second Dacian
War. Dacia becomes a pro-
vince. (114-116) Invasion
of Parthia, capture of
Ctesiphon. New provinces :
Armenia, Mesopotamia,
Assyria, and Arabia
Abandoned Armenia, Meso-
potamia and Assyria. Grand
tour of the empire.
Hadrian's wall in Britain.
Revolt and destruction of
the Jewish nation
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY
YEAR
A.D.
161
180
193
193
211
217
218
222
235
237
244
249
251
253
253
260
268
270
273
275
276
DOMESTIC EVENTS
Marcus Aurelius. Plague in Italy.
Statue and column of M. Aurelius
Commodus
Pertinax murdered by soldiers. Didius
Julianus bought the throne
Septimius Severus proclaimed by the
Illyrian legions. Great jurist
Papinian flourishes
Caracalla
Baths of Caracalla finished
Elagabalus, Attempt to introduce
Sun-worship
Severus Alexander. The jurist
Ulpian and the historian Dio
Cassius flourished
Maximinus Thrax
Gordianus I. and II. and III.
Philippus, the Arabian
Decius. Persecution of Christians
Callus
j&milianus
Valerianus
EXTERNAL EVENTS
War against Parthia. War with
Marcomanni and Quadi.
Emperor died at Vienna
Expedition to Britain. Em-
peror died at York. Strength-
ening of walls
All inhabitants of provinces
(except Egypt) become
citizens
New Persian Empire of the
Sassanidx begun
Defeat of the Goths in Thrace.
Decius fell in the fighting
Gallienus. Time of great confusion
owing to pretenders. "The
thirty tyrants "
Claudius Gothicus
Aurelian (" Restitutor Orbis"). Wall
round Rome
Tacitus (choice of the Senate)
Probus
282 Carus, then Numerianus, then Carinus
Wars against German invaders,
Franks, Alemanni, and Goths.
Expedition to Persia. Em-
peror captured
Tetricus sets up a rival empire
in Gaul and Spain. Odena-
thus sets up an independent
kingdom at Palmyra in
Syria
Defeats German invaders
Sacrifices Dacia across the
Danube to the Goths. Re-
pulses Alemanni and Marco-
manni from Italian soil. De-
feats Zenobia and destroys
Palmyra. Defeats Tetricus
Temple of the Sun constructed
at Heliopolis (Ba'albek)
Drives back the Barbarians and
restores the defences
323
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY
YEAR
A.D.
284
to
305
3°7
323
to
337
325
33°
361
to
363
375
DOMESTIC EVENTS
Diocletian resided chiefly at Nico-
media in Asia Minor, leaving the
west to Maximian, Constantius
and Galerius appointed Caesars.
Persecution of Christians
Six " Augusti " claiming the purple,
Constantine of Britain among them
Constantine the Great (sole emperor).
Christianity recognised by the
State
Arian conflict, Council of Nicaea
Building of Constantinople
Julian the Apostate endeavours to
revive Paganism
379 Theodosius. After Theodosius the
to division of the Empire becomes
395 permanent
395 Arcadius rules the East : Honorius
rules the West
WEST
400 Alaric invades Italy
402 Imperial residence transferred from
Rome to Ravenna
410 Capture and sack of Rome by Alaric
415 Visigoths found a kingdom at
Toulouse
429 Vandals found a kingdom in Africa
449 Anglo-Saxons begin to settle in
Britain
451 Attila and the Huns defeated by
Aetius and the Goths near Chalons
452 Foundation of Venice
476 Odoacer, barbarian general, deposes
the last Western emperor, Romulus
Augustulus
527
EXTERNAL EVENTS
Persians defeated, Egyptian and
British revolts crushed
Beginning of the great German
folk-wanderings
Visigoths received in Moesia
if Christians. Massacre of
Thessalonica (St. Ambrose of
Milan)
EAST
Justinian, emperor. Victories
of Belisarius. Codification of
law
324
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[The following list of books will serve two purposes, as a guide to the
reader who wishes to inquire further on any special point, and as an
acknowledgment of some of the obligations of the writer. Only works
available in English are here included, and the list is selected rather than
exhaustive.]
General Histories of Rome
PELHAM. Outlines of Roman History. Rivingtons.
WARDE FOWLER. Rome. (Home University Library.)
Williams and Norgate.
General Histories of the Republic
MOMMSEN. A History of Rome. 5 vols. Bentley.
HEITLAND. The Roman Republic. 3 vols. Cambridge
University Press.
MYRES. A History of Rome. Rivingtons.
How and LEIGH. A History of Rome to the Death of
Caesar. Longmans.
General Histories of the Empire
GIBBON. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Ed.
Bury. Methuen. 7 vols.
BURY. The Student's Roman Empire (to the Death of
Marcus Aurelius). Murray.
STUART JONES. Roman Empire. Story of the Nations.
Fisher Unwin.
Special Periods and Biographies
STRACHAN-DAVIDSON. Cicero. Heroes of the Nations.
Putnams.
325
BIBLIOGRAPHY
WARDE FOWLER. Caesar. Heroes of the Nations.
Putnams.
BOISSIER. Cicero and his Friends. Innes.
OMAN. Seven Roman Statesmen. Arnold.
MOMMSEN. The Provinces of the Roman Empire.
2 vols. Macmillan.
DILL. Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius
Macmillan.
Roman Society in the last Century of the
Western Empire. Macmillan.
RICE HOLMES. Caesar's Conquest of Gaul. Macmillan,
and Clarendon Press.
PAIS. Ancient Legends of Roman History. Sonnen-
schein.
FERRERO. Greatness and Decline of Rome. 5 vols.
Heinemann.
TARVER. Tiberius the Tyrant. Constable.
HAVERFIELD. The Romanisation of Roman Britain.
Clarendon Press.
Politics
GREENIDGE. Roman Public Life. Macmillan.
ARNOLD. Roman Provincial Administration. Macmillan.
Morals and Religion
FRIEDLANDER. Roman Life and Manners. Routledge.
WARDE FOWLER. The Religious Experiences of the
Roman People. Macmillan.
The Roman Festivals. Macmillan.
GLOVER. Conflict of Religions under the Roman Empire.
Methuen.
RAMSAY. The Church in the Roman Empire before
A.D. 170. Putnams.
LECKY. History of European Morals. Longmans.
326
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Economics
CUNNINGHAM. Western Civilisation in its Economic
Aspects. Vol. I. Cambridge University Press.
Literature
SELLAR. Roman Poets of the Augustan Age. Claren-
don Press.
CRUTTWELL. History of Roman Literature. Griffin.
MACKAIL. Latin Literature. Murray.
RUSHFORTH. Latin Historical Inscriptions. Clarendon
Press.
Art and Archeology
MRS. STRONG. Roman Sculpture. Duckworth.
WALTERS. The Art of the Romans. Methuen.
WICKHOFF. Roman Art. Macmillan.
MAU. Pompeii, its Life and Art. Macmillan.
HILL. Handbook of Greek and Roman Coins. Mac-
millan.
Topography.
BURN. Rome and the Campagna.
MIDDLETON. Remains of Ancient Rome. 2 vols. 1872.
MURRAY'S Handbooks.
BAEDEKER'S Guides.
LANCIANI. Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent
Discoveries. Macmillan.
Law
BUCKLAND. Roman Law of Slavery. 1908. Cambridge
University Press.
ROBY. Roman Private Law. 1902. Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
327
INDEX
ABITENE, 194
Accomplishments, early Roman, 34
"Accountants," 276
Achaean League, 55, 202
Achaia, 193, 202
Actium, Battle of, 129, 166, 184, 188,
202, 240
Actors, 137
Acts of the Apostles, 200
Aden, 204
Adherbal, 91
Adiabene, 267
Adige, 220
Admirals, 187
Adriatic fleet, 186, 187
Adultery, law against, 226
Advertisements, 285
JEdiles, 30, 32, 134
^Edui, 262
.<€isopus (actor), 132
Aetius, 314
^Etolian cavalry, 55
Afranius, 123
Africa, province of, 59, 193, 208, 283 ;
diocese, 312
Agathocles, 45, 61
Agedincum, 212
Agri Decumates, 264
Agricola, Julius, 260, 261
Agriculture, early Roman, 36, 70
Agrippa, General under Augustus, 165;
intended successor to Augustus,
174, 175 ; disciplinarian, 183 ; over-
lord in Asia, 195 ; Herod and, 205 ;
and the worship of Jehovah, 207 ;
and the conquest of Spain, 221 ;
married to Julia, 227, 228; temple
erected by, 251
Agrippa, Marcus Vipsanius, 129
Agrippa Postumus, 229
Agrippina, 224
Agrippina, (mother of Nero), 256, 272
Alani, 307
Alba Longa, 25
Albinus, Spurius, 92
Alcamenes, 156
Alcantara, Bridge of, 294
Alemanni, 309
Alesia, 116.
Alexander the Great, i, 6
Alexandria, Caesar at, 122 ; and con-
vention in literature, 151; rivalry
with Rome, 202, 282 ; Jews in, 268
" Alimenta," 276
Aliso, 216
"Allies and friends," 28, 60
Alme, 216
Alpes Cottiae, 194
Alpes Maritimse, 194
Alpine tribes, 220
Alps, the, Hannibal's march, 50 ;
roads over, 220
Amazons, 258, 307
Amphitheatre, the Grand, 282
Amphitheatre displays, 74; butchery,
137
Amphitheatres, 243, 279; in Britain,
261
Ampsaga, river, 208
Amusements, 136, 279
"Analecta," 137
Anchises, 224
Ancus Martius, 19
Ancyra, 199
Ancyran monument, 188
Andernach, 264
329
INDEX
Andronikos, 74
Anglesey, 259, 260
Anna Perenna, 36, 39
Antinous, 293
Antioch, 247, 267, 268, 282
Antiochus of Syria, 54, 55
Antium, 134
Antonine Constitution, 299
Antonine Wall, 261
Antonines, the, 277
Antoninus Pius, 262, 271, 277;
column of, 292
Antonius (orator), 104
Antonius, L., 164
Antony, Mark, and Caesar, 124; and
the succession, 126, 127; and
Octavian (Augustus), 127, 128, 163,
164; the Triumvirate, 128; vic-
tories, 128; and Cleopatra, 128,
129, 164, 203; and Actium, 130;
marriages, 138; and Cicero, 148
Antony and Cleopatra, coins of, 155
Aosta, 220
Apelles, 296
Apennines, slave refugees, 106
Apicius, 279
Apollo as a Roman god, 79 ; temple
to, 1 68
Apollodorus, 266
Apollonia, 201, 202
Apollonius, 290
Appian Way, 34
Appius Claudius, 85
Appius Claudius (censor), 34, 42, 46
Appuleian Laws, 95, 99
Apuleius, 290
Aquae Mattiacae (Wiesbaden), 264
Aquae Sextias, 94
Aqueducts, 179, 280, 283, 293
Aquilegia, 220
Aquitania, 210
Arabia, 194, 204, 267
Arabs, 307
Aratus, 234
Arausio (Orange), 94
Arcesilaus, 156, 249
Arch, the, 153, 294
Arch, triumphal, 196
Archelaus, 206
330
Architecture of the Republic, 151-
154; of the Augustan period, 250—
252 ; of the Empire, 293-297 ;
later Roman and early Christian,
316
Arena. See Amphitheatre
Aretine pottery, 159
Areus, 209
Arezzo, 120
Argos, 202
Aristocracy, government by, 71, 72;
debased, 81; wealth, 132; Augus-
tus and, 224; under the Empire,
254; Domitian and the, 274. See
also Patricians
Aristotle, 290
Armenia, 194, 198, 199, 200, 267,
268
Arminius, 218, 219, 263
Armour of soldiers, 29, 98
Army-^professional, as constituted by
Marius, 96-99 ; and government,
99; under Augustus, 182; soldier-
ing becomes a profession, 184 ; how
constituted, 184; rate of pay, 185;
distribution of the legions, 185 ; pay
(finance), 188; bounties to veterans,
189
Arpinum, 134
Art, Etruscan, 20 ; early Roman, 22,
34, 66; of the Republic, 151-159;
of the Augustan period, 243-252 ;
of the Empire, Greek influence,
291; sculpture, 292; history of,
293 ; influence of Antinous, 293 ;
architecture, 294-297 ; painting,
296; minor arts, 297; Byzantine,
316
"Art, Roman," 151, 245
Art collectors under the Republic,
155
Artillery, 280
Artists, 248
Arts, the, and politics, 231
Arusine Plain, 46
" Aryan," 2
As, the copper (coin), 17, 34, 154
Aschaffenburg, 264
Ashtaroth, 39
INDEX
Asia Minor, coins of, 249 ; Jews in,
268 ; Christianity in, 302
Asia, province of, 59 ; wealth, 61, 64;
taxes, 88 ; control by Augustus, 178;
senatorial province, 193; security
in, 200; diocese, 312
" Asiarchs," 201
Assassins, 268
Assessments for taxes, 276
Assyria, 267
Asturians, 220
Asturica Augusta (Astorga), 221
Athens and Rome, contrast between,
2 ; allied with Rome, 55 ; Sulla and,
101 ; and education, 133; an allied
state, 194 ; position of, under Rome,
201 ; new quarter, 284
Athletics, 286
Atrium, the, 135
Attalids, the. of Pergamum, 246
Attalus, 55
Attalus III., 59
Attica, 201
Atticus, 131, 233
Attila, 314
Attius, 138
Augsburg, 220
Augurs, 133
Augusta Emerita (Merida), 221
Augusta (legion), 183
"Augustals," 181
" Augustan " age, the. See Augustus
Augustan history, 305
Augusti, 312
Augustine, 316
Augustulus, Romulus, 315
Augustus (Gneius Octavius, Octa-
vianus) adds Egypt to the Empire,
60; Caesar's heir, 124, 127; takes
up his inheritance, 127; triple
alliance, 128; pursues the tyranni-
cides, 128; master of the West, 129;
becomes the Emperor Augustus,
100, 130; health, 136; and litera-
ture, 151; and monarchy, 161 ;
statesmanship, 161, 182; Suetonius
on, 162; character, 163; and
Cleopatra, 164; policy, 164, 165;
triumph, 165 ; and peace, 166 ; and
the patricians, 167 ; takes a census,
167 ; strengthens the senate, 167 ;
improves Rome, 167; establishes
the Empire, 168 ; senate names
him Augustus, 169; "restores the
Republic," 168, 169; constitutional
position, 170; wealth, 172; as
censor, 172; consulships, 173;
tribunician power, 173 ; successors,
174; age and reign, 175; and the
senate, 175; pretended abdication,
177; powers, 177; patron of the
people, 1 80 ; and the laws, 180;
military position, 182; creates a
navy, 186; and public finance, 188;
his generosity, 188; his provinces,
194 ; account of condition of Italy,
196 ; and the Parthians, 197 ; cult
of himself, 201, 225; and Egypt,
203; and the Soudan, 204; and
Herod, 206 ; and the Jews, 207 ;
in Sicily> 209 ; and Gaul, 209; and
Germany, 212; and Spain, 220;
results of his rule, 221; his work,
223; aristocracy and, 224; plots
against, 224 ; flattery, 224 ; and the
regeneration of Roman society, 225;
as a father, 226; marriages, 226;
and the succession, 228; family,
229; his habits, 229; character,
230; education, 231 ; and literature,
232; in Vergil, 234; in Horace,
239; and art, 243; and rebuilding of
Rome, 244, 248 ; culture, 252 ; and
the enlargement of the Empire, 259
Aurelian, 307
Aurelius, Marcus, Antonine dynasty,
277 ; philosophy fashionable under,
279; Galen, his state physician,
290 ; portrait, 292, 294 ; hostile to
Christianity, 302 ; and immortality,
303 ; Rome under, 305 ; and the
barbarians, 309, 311
Ausonius, 316
Austria, 217, 220
Autonomy, local, 284
Aventine Hill, 280
Avernus, Lake of, 186
Axiomitse, 307
331
INDEX
BA'ALBEK, 282, 295
Bacchic mysteries, 79
Bacchus, 240
Bactrians, 307
Bsetica, 221
Baiae, 134, 251, 257, 296; Turner's
picture of, 283
Bakery account from Pompeii, 285
Balearic slingers, 98
Balkans, 220
Bank rate, 166
Bankrupts and the senate, 103
Banks, 64
Banquets, 133, 136, 196
Barberini panel, 316
Barcas, the, 49
Barea Soranus, 273, 300
Barristers, 298
Batansea, 194
Batavian cavalry, 184
Baths, 136, 196, 243, 261, 283
Baths of Titus, the, 293
Battle-array, 29
Beasts for the arena, 133
Bedriacum, 273
Beja, 221
Belgica, 210
Bestia, 91, 92
Bibulus, iii
Bithynia, 60, 193, 200
" Bithyniarchs," 201
Black Sea, 186, 220, 297
Blemyes, 307
Boadicea, 219, 260
Boeotia, 201
Bohemia, 217
Books, 131 ; Cicero's books, 134
Bosco Reale, 249
Bosphorus, 194
Brenner Pass, 263
Brennus, 199
Brescia, 196
Bribery and corruption, 79, 133
Brickwork, 294
Bridge, marble, 196
Brigantes, the, 261, 262
Britain, Caesar's expeditions to, 117;
Caesar on, 150; Augustus and, 170,
209, 210; conquest of, 259;
332
empire-building in, 260; and
Roman civilisation, 261 ; roads,
262 ; walls, 261, 262 ; and the
" Latin right," 299 ; and separate
unity, 308; diocese, 312 ; deserted,
Britannicus, 272
Britons, the, 114
Bronze-work, 297
Brotherhood of man, 302
Brundisium, 145
Bruttium, 45, 47
Brutus and liberty, 33 ; as hero, 112;
against Caesar, 124; and the assas-
sination of Cassar, 126; and the
succession, 127; fall of, 128; bust
of, 157; as martyr, 173; and
Horace, 237
Budgets under Augustus, 192
Buffer states, 198, 199, 214
Building, early, 19; materials (houses),
135. J53; principles of, 153;
brickwork, 294 ; villas, 295
Bureaucracy, 171, 181, 270, 272, 276,
278, 310
Burgundians, 212, 213
Byzantine (Constantinople), 313
Byzantine art, 316
Byzantine Empire, the, 313
CADIZ, 49
Caecilius, 76
" Caesar " (Emperor), 112
" Caesar and the Roman People," cult
of, 207
Caesar Augusta (Saragossa), 221
Caesar, Gaius Julius, adds Gaul to the
Empire, 60 ; and the monarchy,
100 ; birth and lineage, 109; as
Pontifex Maximus, 109; and the
conspiracy of Catiline, no; praetor
to Spain, no; the] Triumvirate,
no; becomes Consul, no; con-
quests of Gaul, in, 116 ; honours
paid to, by poets and others, 112;
account of the Gallic Wars, 112; as
historian, 113, 150; his greatness,
113; his work, 114; as a soldier,
116; and Britain, 117, 150; and
Pompeius, 114, 119 ; civil war, 120 ;
devotion of his men, 121 ; conquers
at Pharsalus, 121, 122; in Egypt,
122; and Cleopatra, 122; con-
quests, 122, 123 ; supporters, 124;
reforms, 125; kingship, 125; slain,
126; his will, 127 ; wealth of, 132 ;
epileptic, 135; wives, 138; and
Roman history, 145 ; as orator,
149; his Commentaries, 149; por-
traits, 157; and monarchy, 1 6 1 ;
temple to, 166; The Commentaries
and Germany, 214; deified, 225;
as poet, 232.
Caesar, L., 104
Caesar-worship, 231, 267, 300
Caesarea, 206, 268
Caesarion, 122
Caesars, the, 254
Calabria, 45
Caledonians, the, 261, 262
Caligula (Gaius Caesar), 253, 268, 269,
271, 272
Callimachus, 239
Callipolis, 286
Calpurnia, 126
Cameos, 249
Campagna, the Roman, 12, 25;
shepherds, 37
Campania, 28, 34, 283
Campanian Road, 134
Campus Martius, 36, 153
Camulodunum (Colchester), 259, 260
Candace, 205
Candlestick, the seven - branched
golden, 269
Cannabce, 310
Cannae, 51
Canon law, 299
Cantabrians, 220
Capital punishment, 43
Capitol, the, 25, 153, 293, 307
Capitoline Hill, 282
Cappadocia, 194, 267
Capri, 229
Capua, 51
Caracalla, 292, 299, 306
Caradoc, 260
Carbo, 94
Carducci and Catullus, 144
Garrhas, 119, 197
Carthage, the early Romans and, 1 3,
17 ; Roman treaty with, 348 B.C.,
26 ; Pyrrhus and the Carthaginians,
46 ; Carthaginian Wars, 47 ; First
Punic War, 48 ; Second Punic War,
49 ; and Hannibal, 50 ; defeated,
53 ; Third Punic War, 57 ; siege and
destruction, 58 ; a province, 59 ;
colony at, 88 ; refounded as colony
by Augustus, 208; Carthaginian
invaders of Sicily, 209
Cams, 308
Carving (food), 137
Caspian Sea, 213
Cassius, 112, 126-128, 271
Castle of St. Angelo, 294 '
Catiline, conspiracy of, no; Cicero
on, 147
Cato (the Censor), prayer on cutting
a grove quoted, 40; and Carthage,
57; and slaves, 71; and luxury,
72 ; and prudishness, 80 ; policy of,
83-
Cato the younger (of Utica), character,
1 1 1 ; and the end of the Republic,
108, 118; death, 123; wives, 138;
and Stoicism, 139; and the senate,
147 ; austerity, 148
Catullus, 104, 142, 232, 243
Caudine Pass, the, 28
Celibacy, tax on, 190, 226
Celtic religion, 221
Celts, the, 115
Censors, 32, 72, 272
Censorship of letters, 232
Census-taking, 32, 167
Ceres, 38, 39
Chalons, Battle of, 314
Chariot-racing, 279, 280, 314
Charlemagne, 112
Chastity, 33
Chatti, 263
Chauci, 216, 263
Cheruscia, 216, 217, 218, 219
Chester, 260
Christianity and Caesar worship, 201,
300 ; conflict with Mithraism, 299 ;
333
INDEX
Rome and the establishment of, 500 ;
Stoicism and, 300, 302 ; con-
founded with Judaism, 300; scruples
of Christians, 301 ; proselytes, 301 ;
inquisitions and martyrdoms, 301;
Edict of Milan, 302 ; hostility of
emperors, 302; monotheism, 303;
rites and saints taken from paganism,
303; the Church and the Roman
political system, 304 ; Constantine
and, 313; Rome and the Church,
3*5
Chronological summary of Roman
history, 317-324
Chrysostom, St. John, 316
Church and state, 315
Churches, Christian, 316
Cicero, Latinity of, 9 ; the translation
of, 10 ; and pleading in law, 43;
and Pompeius, 108; oration on
Manilius, 109 ; and the conspiracy
of Catiline, no; policy, no; exile,
1 1 8, 127; slain, 128; his gains as
governor of Cilicia, 131; his wealth,
I3I. 134; his houses, 134; and
library, 134; health, 135; divorces
his wife, 138 ; and Plato, 139; his
influence on Latin literature, 1 44 ;
his policy and rhetoric, 145; his
character, 145 • creator of Latin
prose, 146, 231; his style, 146; as
a lawyer, 146; oratory, 147; politi-
cal life, 148 ; his end, 148 ; bust of,
157 ; and immortality, 231; not a
client, 232
Cicero, Quintus, 124, 146
Cilicia, a province, 59, 193; 200;
pirate-state at, 106 ; Cicero's gains
as governor, 131
Cimbri, the invasion by the, 93 ;
defeated by Marius, 94
Cincinnatus, 33
Cineas, 46
Cinna (consul), 104
Circus Maximus, 280
Circuses, 243
Cirta, 91
Citizenship, Roman, 27, 30, 299
"City Legion," 184
334
City prefect, 182
City-states, the, 6, 27, 69, 278
Civic ardour, 284
Civil law of Rome, 298
Civil service, the, 276
Civil War, First, 120-123
Civil War, Second, 128, 129
Civil wars, restorations after the, 196
Civilisation, early Roman, 34 ; under
the Republic, 130; under Augustus,
200.
Classical education, 291
Classical literature, the golden age of,
iS°
Classicism, 9
Claudian, 316
Claudian house, the, 227
Claudian law, 132
Claudian Way, 220
Claudii, the, 24, 42, 72
Claudius, Suetonius on, 162 ; forbids
Druidism, 211 ; his character, 254 ;
best of the Claudian Caesars, 255 ;
and Messalina, 255, 256 ; and
Germany, 263 ; and Thrace, 265 ;
as Caesar, 271, 272; death, 272;
building under, 293
Claudius Gothicus, 307
Cleopatra and Caesar, 122 ; and
Antony, 126, 128, 129, 138, 203;
and Augustus, 164; and Herod the
Great, 205
Cleopatra's daughter, 208
Clergy, Christian, 311
Clerks, copying, 131
Client system, 72 ; in literature, 232
Clodia, 138
Clodius, 1 08, in, ii 8, 119
Clcelia, 33
Cohorts, 98; urban, 186; of watch-
men, 186
Coinage, early, 17; copper, 34
Coins under the Republic, 154 ;
portraits on, 158; legionary, 183;
with Parthian suppliant, 198; for
Judeea, 207 ; of Asia Minor, 249
Colchester, 259, 260
Collecting art objects, 225, 248
"Collegia," 284
INDEX
Collegial system, 31
Colline Gate, the, 105
Coloni (tillers of the soil), 311
Colonia Agrippinensis (Cologne), 215,
219, 263
Colonnades, 196, 243, 250
Colosseum, the, 282, 293
Columella, 290
Columns in architecture, 154
Comedy, 75~77
Comitatus, the, 312
Comitia, 25, 30, 36, 86, 174, 179
Commagene, 194, 199
Commander oflegions, 134
Commerce, 131
Commodus, 264, 277
Como, 283, 296
Companies, commercial, 131
Consilium, 176
Constantine, Arch of, 280, 316;
Basilica of, 282
Constantine, Emperor, Caesar and,
112 ; and a new senate, 179; and
Christianity, 302, 313; and tillers
of the soil, 311; founds Constanti-
nople, 313
Constantinople founded, 313; mosaics
of, 316
Constitution of ancient Rome, 30
Consuls, 25, 30, 31, 63, 125, 134,
181, 193
Copper coinage, 34, 154
Coptos, 204
Corduba, 220
Cordus, Cremutius, 271
Corinth destroyed, 57, 58 ; restored
by Julius Caesar, 302 ; and Greek
art, 247
Corinthian column, the, 250
Corn, duty on, 273
Corn-supply, 69, 109, 181, 188, 190,
209, 308
Corn trust, Sicilian, 109
Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, 84
Cornelia, daughter of Scribonia,24o
Cornelii, the, 72
Corocota (Gaius Julius Caracuttus),
221
"Correctors," 276
Corsica, 48, 59, 193
Coryphaeus, 280
Courage an early Roman virtue, 33
Crassus, Marcus, subdues the rising of
the slaves, 106 ; defeated at Carrhae,
107, 119; his wealth, 107, 132;
and Caesar, no, 114, 118; the con-
spiracy of Catiline, no
Crassus (orator), 84, 104
Cremera, Battle of, 24
Cremona, 53
Cretan archers, 98
Crete, 38, 60, 193, 208
Cross, the, Constantine and, 313
Cruttwell, C. T., on Ovid, 240
Ctesiphon, 267
Culture and religion, 35
Cumae, 134
Cura annonce, 190
"Curators," 276
Curiales, 311
Curies, 30.
Curtius, Quintus, 33
Curule chair, the, 22
Customs duties, 272
Cybele, the worship of, 79
Cyclades, the, 201
Cymbeline, 259
Cynics, the, 302
Cynocephalae, 55
Cyprus, 178, 193, 200
Cyrenaica, 193, 208
Cyrene, 60, 208, 268
Cytheris, 126, 138
DACIA, 265, 266, 267, 312
Dalmatia, 193, 265
Dalmatian War, 187
Damascus, 268
Danish shores, 213
Dante and Caesar, 112; Dante's debt
to Roman poets, 289
Danube, the, 197, 218, 219, 220, 263,
264, 265, 306, 309, 314
Danube frontier, 220
Dead, burial of the, 34
Death, 303
Death-duties, 189
Death-masks, 248
335
INDEX
Debtors, punishment of, 43
Decebalus, 265
Decemviri, 42
Decius, 301
Decuriones, 195, 311
"Delation," 204, 272, 275, 277
Delphi, 101, aoi
Delphic Amphictyony, the, 202
Demetrius, 5 1
Democracy, the Gracchi and, 86, 90 ;
Julius Caesar and, 109
Democritus, 139
Denarius, silver, 207
Despotism, benevolent, 311
Development fund, 276
Diana, 38, 39, 238
Diana of Ephesus, Temple of, 201
Dictator, 125
Dill, Dr. Samuel, on Pliny, 279, 284
Dining, 133
Dinner-parties, 136
Dio Cassius, 168, 182
Dio Chrysostom, 290
" Dioceses," 312
Diocletian, 271, 301, 310, 311
Diocletian, palace of, 316
Diplomacy, Roman, 26
Discipline, Roman, 26, 183; of army,
97
Divination, Etruscan, 21
Divodurum, 212
Divorce, 80, 136, 226
Docks, 1 86
Domitian, unpopular, 177; and
Britain, 261; and imperial expan-
sion, 264; and Decebalus, 265; a
tyrant, 274; and the senate, 274;
assassination, 275; and Titus, 293
Doric architecture, 153 ; column, 250
Drama, beginnings, 73; Greek trage-
dies translated for Roman stage,
75 ; comedies, 75; under the Re-
public, 137
Drinking, 136
Druidism, 114, 211, 259
Drusus, 184, 215, 227, 239
Drusus, M. Livius, 102
Dukes (dux), 312
Durocortorum, 212
336
Dutch horsemen, 184
Dutch shores, 213
Dutch territory, 216
Duties, customs, 212, 273
Duumviri, 195
Dyarchy, the, 177, 275
EAGLE, the silver (standard), 98
Eagles, Roman, captured, 197
East, the, and Roman art, 249
Eating, 136
Eburacum (York), 261
Edict of Milan, 302
Edicts, perpetual, 298, 299
Education, beginnings, 74 ; under the
Republic, 132 ; in Gaul, 211 ; and
schools in 200 A.D., 280 ; Pliny
endows a secondary school, 283;
and schools under the Empire,
285-286
Egnatius Rufus, 180
Egypt allied against Philip of Macedon,
55 ; conquered by Octavian (Augus-
tus), 60, 130, 1 66; Pompeius and
Cassar in, 122; private possession
of Augustus, 170, 172; prefect
of, 1 80, 194; corn-supply, 190;
wealth, 202 ; under Augustus, 203;
religion, 203; taxes, 203; canals
and irrigation, 203; reservoirs, 204 ;
position of prefect, 204 ; and Greek
art, 247 ; rebels in the triumph of
Aurelian, 307 ; a diocese, 312
Elagabalus, 306
Elbe, the, 216, 217, 218
Election posters, 285
Electra (sculpture), 249, 250
Elephantine, Nilometer at, 204
Elephants, 46
Eleusinian mysteries, 55, 231
Emesa, 194, 199; fetish-stone, 306
Empire-building, 28, 44, 211
Empire, the early, history, 162;
establishment of, 168; illegitimate,
254; during its first century, 259;
limits of the, 269 ; junior colleagues
to Caesar, 276; weak through its
vastness, 308 ; decay, 313 ; divided,
313; dismembered, 314
INDEX
Empire, the Eastern, 313
Ems, 216, 264
Ennius, 76, 78, 138, 236
Ephesus, 201, 247, 282
Epictetus, 302
Epicurus, 139
Epirot phalanx, 46
Equality, 33, 71
Equestrian class (Equites), 64, 88, 97,
180
Eros (Egyptian tax-gatherer), 191
Esquiline Camp, 258
Esquiline Hill, 25
Ethics, Christian, 302, 303
Etruria, conquests, 28; Sullan colonists
in, no
Etruscans, the, neighbours at be-
ginning of Rome, 13; piracy, 13,
17; remains, 14, 20; conquest of
Rome, 19; their origin, so; art,
20, 22; character, 21; divination,
21 ; costumes, 22 ; decline of the
Etruscan power, 23 ; Etruscan
princes of Rome, 20, 23 ; enemy of
Rome, 28; gods, 39; portraiture,
152, 156; and Roman architecture,
153 ; and Roman art, 248
Eudsemones, 307
Euhemerism, 201
Euphrates, the, 197, 267
Europe, Rome and the making of, 5 ;
Germany and the history of, 213
Extortion, 133, 191, 209, 212, 273
Extravagances, 279
Fabii, the, 24, 72
Fabius, Pictor, 150
Fabius, Quintus, 51
Family, the, 225
Famine, 190
Farnese Palace, 251
"Father of his country," 179
Fatherhood, 226
Fatherhood of God, 303
Fathers, power of, 25
Fauns, 37
Faustina, 224
Feasting, 133, 136
Felix, 206
Fencing, 98
Ferrero, Signor G., on Caesar's charac-
ter, 112; on Augustus, 199; and
Gaul, 210
Festivals, early Roman, 36
Festus, 207
Fever, malarial, 135
Fifth Legion, 215
Finance, beginnings, 66 ; under
Augustus, 187 ; gifts, 188 ; pro-
perty-tax and death-duties, 189 ; of
the senate, 192
Financial corruption, 64
Financiers, 194
Fire-brigade, 181, 186
Flamines, 38
Flaminian Way, 196
Flaminii, the, 72
Flamininus, 55
Flavian age, the, 293
Flavian dynasty, 274
Flax, 2 1 2
Flora, 38, 39
Footmen, 137
Fordicidia, 40
Formise, 134
Fortifications, frontier, 261, 262,
264
Fortuna Virilis, 39; Temple of, 153,
IS4
Fortune-hunters, 226
Forum, the, 33, 252
Forum Julii (Frejus), 187
Forums, 280, 282
Fowler, W. Warde, 35
France, roads of, 211
Frankfort, 264
Franks, 212, 213, 307, 309
Fratres Arvales, 39
Frazer, J. G., 35
" Free " states, 60
Freedmen, 181
Freeman, E. A., 19
Frejus, 187
French Revolution, the, and the
Roman Republic, 71
Frescoes, 296
Friezes, 246
Frisians, 216
337
INDEX
Frontiers, 223; fortified, 261 ; natural,
266
Fulvia, 126, 127, 129, 138, 149
Furniture, 297
GABII, 25
Gabinian Law, 109
Gadara, 205
Gades, 220, 282
Gaetulian nomads, 208
Gaius (Emperor). See Caligula
Gaius, over-lord in Asia, 195; and the
Parthian king, 200 ; and the suc-
cession, 228 ; tutor and servants of,
230
Gaius, "Institutes" of, 299
Galatia, 193, 199
Galatians, 184
Galba, 179, 258, 273
Galen, 290
Galilee, 194, 206, 268
Gallia. See Gaul
Gallienus, 306, 307
Gallus, Cornelius, 203, 204, 232, 234
Gamaliel, 207
Games, public, 137
Gardening, 296
Gardthausen, Dr., on Augustus, 162 ;
on the Roman Army and the British
Empire, 186
Gaul. The Gauls and Etruria, 23,
28 ; Gallic invasion of 390 B.C., 25,
26; conquest of the Gauls, 49;
allies of Hannibal, 50; revolt of the
Gauls, 53, 117; Southern Gaul, 59 ;
Cisalpine Gaul, 60 ; Gallia Nar-
bonensis, 59,193,209; Gallia Comata,
60, 210; conquest by Caesar, in ;
Caesar and the Gallic wars, 112;
the Gauls, time of Caesar, 114;
politics, 116; and Augustus, 169,
172; province, 193; Gauls in Galatia,
199; under Augustus, 209-211;
gods, 2 1 1 • tribes, 211; German
inroads, 215; revolt against Nero,
257 ; and Britain, 259 ; civilisation,
262, nationality, 262 ; " Empire of
the Gauls," 262 ; Gallic communities
and the "Latin right," 299; Gallic
338
empire destroyed, 307 ; unity, 308 ;
diocese, 312
Geese, sacred, 59
Gems, portraits on, 158
Generosity, public, 284
Genius (luck), 37, 156
Geographical knowledge, ancient, 59
Germanicus as General in Germany,
184,217, 218,219,263; Augustus
and the children of, 226; the
poisoning of, 255
Germany. Caesar and the Germans,
117; German slaves bodyguard,
184; German revolt, 184; pro-
vince Germania, 193 ; Augustus
and, 197, 212; and its conquest,
214-220; social system and tribes,
214; inroads into Gaul, 215; un-
conquered, 263 ; Germans in the
triumph of Aurelian, 307 ; unity,
308
Ghosts (Lemures), 37
Gibbon, Edward, influence of, on view
of Roman history, 3 ; and the
Roman imperial system, 277
Gladiatorial combats, 74
Gladiators, 71, 131, 133, 137, 185,
280, 282
Glaucia, 95
Gluttony, 136, 279
Glycon, 156
Gods, loves of the, in Ovid, 240
Gods, Roman. See Religion
Gold mines of Macedon, 54, 58
Golden House, the, of Nero, 256, 293
Goldsmith art, 249
Gordians, the, 306
Goths, the, 213, 299, 307, 309, 314
Government, Roman, benevolent, 61 ;
local autonomy to conquered terri-
tories, 62 ; want of policy by senate,
82
Governors, Roman, 63, 134
Gracchi, the, 84
Gracchus, Gaius, takes up reform, 87 ;
elected a tribune, 88 ; his policy,
88-89 j murdered, 89
Gracchus, Tiberius, 84 ; training, 85 ;
and the land, 85, 86; and de-
INDEX
mocracy, 86 ; elected a tribune, 86 ;
murdered, 87
Grseco-Roman culture under Augustus,
231 ; and Roman literature, 288
Gravitas, 43
Greece, resemblances between Rome
and, i ; Greece and expansion, 6 •
influence of, on Rome, 72, 74, 81 ;
influence of, on Roman literature,
151 ; and Roman architecture, 153,
250, 251 ; influence of, on por-
traiture, 157; Roman veneration
for Greece, 201 ; and Roman edu-
cation, 201 ; position of, in the
Roman Empire, 201; Greek reli-
gion, 207 ; and Roman art, 243-252
Greek cities, 1 94
Greek culture, extent of, 200 ; in
Rome, 231
Greek drama for the Roman stage, 75,
^76
Greek mythology and Roman religion,
35. 39
Greek philosophy in Rome, 139
Greek sculpture in Rome, 155
Grotius, 298
Grove, prayer on cutting down a, 40 ;
sacred, 211
Griiningen, 264
Guilds (collegia), 284, 311
Gundobald, 314
HADRIAN visits Britain, 261; strength-
ens the Limes Trans-Rhenanus, 264;
and the Parthians, 267 ; as Em-
peror, 275, 276; life under, 279;
freedom of letters under, 163, 289;
and Greek art, 293 ; and law, 299;
and the army, 310
Hadrian, wall of, 261
Hadrian's villa, 296
Hamilcar, 49
Hannibal, genius of, 47 ; and foreign
conquest, 49 ; becomes leader of
the Carthaginians, 50 ; his greatness
and character, 50 ; march over the
Alps, 50; as a strategist, 51 ; de-
feats, 52, 53; Antiochus and, 56
Harbour dues, 61
Harbours, 187
Hasdrubal, 50, 52
Head, Barclay, on Roman coins, 154
Heating of houses, 280
Heliopolis. See Ba'albek
" Helladarch," 202
Hellenism, 10, 72, 74
Helvetians, the, 94, in
Heraclea, 46
Herculaneum, 297
Hercules, the Farnese, 156
Hercules, Temple of, 250
Hermann. See Arminius
Hermodorus, 153
Herod Antipas, 206
Herod the Great, 184, 198, 205, 206
Herodes Atticus, 284
Hesiod, 234
Hexameter, the Latin, 78, 232
Hiberi, 307
Hiero of Syracuse, 23, 51, 61
Hildesheim, 249
Hippocrates, 290
Hirpinus, 280
Hispania Baetica, 193
Hispania. See Spain
Historians, 138, 150, 305
Historical reliefs (sculpture), 248
History, the arts and politics in, 231
History, early Roman, worthlessness
of, 24 ; Tacitus and Roman history,
2S3i 289 ; lack of interest, 288
Holland, North, 216
Holy of Holies, 207
Homer's Odyssey translated, 74
Honoria, 314
Horace quoted on the past of Rome,
7 ; Latinity of, 9 ; on Hannibal,
52 ; his health, 136 ; on the Portus
Julius, 187 ; and the Parthians, 197,
199 ; and Arabia Felix, 204 ; on the
conquest of Britain, 209 ; educated
in Greece, 237 ; and Csesarism, 237 ;
Satires, 237 ; lyrical odes, 237 ;
drama, 238 ; Odes, 238 ; Century
Hymn, 238; Secular Games, 238;
celebrates Augustus, 239 ; pictures
the life of Rome, 239 ; losses in the
Civil War, 243 ; and satire, 289
339
INDEX
Horatii, 24
Horatius and the saving of Rome,
19. 33
Hortensius, 138
Houses, 134, 135, 152, 296
Humanitarianism, 303
Huns, the, 214, 314
ICENI, the, 260
Ic.tinus, 295
Idealism in Greek art, 158
Ides of March, 36, 126
Idistavisus, 219, 263
Illyria, 48
Illyrian War, 166; revolt, 217
Illyricum, 193, 312
Imagines, 156, 158
Immortality, 303
Imperator, 183
Imperial administration centralised,
278; junior colleagues to Caesar,
276 ; imperial succession, 306
Imperium, 31
India, trade with, 204 ; Greek art, 247
Informers. See " Delation "
Inquisitions, 301
Inscriptions from Pompeii, 285
International law, 298
Intrigue, 224, 229
Ionic columns, 154
Ireland, 261
" Irene," 169
Irish, Gallic Celts and the, compared,
"5
Isis, 39, 139, 203; priests of, 282
Isthmian games, 55
Italian " allies " and the franchise, 102
Italians, citizen rights for, 88-89
Italian, the modern, and the ancient
Roman compared, 13
Italy, divisions of, 12 ; invasions, 15 ;
Civil War, 106; under Augustus,
196; colonies in, 196; a province,
278, 312 ; and the barbarians, 314
Ivories, Byzantine, 316
JAMES, WM., on war, 54
Janus, 38, 154, 1 66
Jerome and Lucretius, 142
340
Jerusalem, Caesar and, 123; under
Augustus and the Herods, 205, 206,
207 ; destruction of, 268
Jesus Christ, 205, 206
Jewellery, 297
Jewish law, 207 ; religion, 207
Jews in the Roman provinces, 200,
208 • under Augustus, 205-207 ;
under the Empire, 267-269. See
also Judaea
John, St., and Philo, 300
Johnson, Dr., and Latin, 8
Juba, King, 122, 123, 208
Judaea, province, 194; under Augustus,
205-207; government and conquest,
267, 268
Judaism, 300
Jugurtha, 84, 91-93
Julia (daughter of Augustus), 175,
227, 228, 229, 230
Julia (the younger), Ovid and, 241,
242
Julian Alps, 220
Julian laws, 226
Julianus, Salvius, 299
Julii, the, 72
Julius Nicanor, 201
Juno, 39
Jupiter, 38, 39, 79, 139, 240, 307
Jupiter Capitolinus, Temple of, 152,
iS3, 269, 282
Jupiter, Temple of, in Mount Zion,
269
Jurisprudences, 298
Jus fetiale, 298; jus gentium, 298;
jus naturae, 298
Justice, 270, 272
Justinian, 299, 315
Juvenal and emperors, n, 138, 163,
242, 278; Latin of, 287; and
satire, 289 ; and ethics, 303
KENT, 150
King, the, 41
Kingship, early, 19
Knuckle-bones, 229
LABIENUS, 121, 123
Labour, free, and slavery, 71
INDEX
Lacedsemon, 201
Lacerna, 280
Lacinian Promontory, the, 45
Laconia, Northern, 201
Lahn, river, 264
Lampridius, 305
Land as property, 34; land specula-
tion, 67, 131 ; neglect of the, 85;
Tiberius Gracchus and, 87 ; Gaius
Gracchus and, 88 ; Marius and,
95 ; Licinian land law, 86 ; land-
tax in Gaul, 190; land system of
Gaul, 211
Langobardi. See Lombards
Lares, 37
Latin, use of, 9 ; culture, 9 ; eclipse of
Latin studies, 9
Latin festival, 38
Latin League, the, 25, 26, 27
Latin period, the (literature), 146
" Latin right," 299
Latin and Teutonic races, contest
between, 213
Latinism, 8
Latium, Plain of, 25
Law, Roman devotion to, 33 ; early
Roman, 41-43; in Gaul, 211;
Julian laws, 225-226; under the
Empire, 297-299; a legacy to the
world, 315
Legates, 193
Legion, composition of a, 98, 172
Legionaries, the, 98
Legiones (Leon), 221
Lemures, 37
Leon, 221
Lepidus, 128, 163
Lesbia, 143
Levies for army, 97
Lex, the, 179
Lex Claudia, 67
Liberty, love of, 33; religious, 270
Libraries, 168, 243, 283
Licinian laws, 86
Licinius (tax-gatherer in Gaul), 191,
212
Licinius Macer (annalist), 150
Lictors, 30, 282
Ligurian cavalry, 98
Lilybseum, 46
Limes Trans-Rhenanus, 264 ; Rhsetian,
264
Linz, 264
Lippe, 216
Literature, early Roman, 34 ; begin-
nings of, 75 ; of the Republic, 142-
151 ; in Rome under Augustus,
231 ; patrons, 232 ; the State and,
241, 243; golden age of (" Augus-
tan"), 242; popularity of, under
the Empire, 286 ; and tyranny, 287,
its eclipse, 287; freedom of, 289;
lack of originality, 291
Livia Drusilla, 227, 228
Livia, house of, 296
Livii, the, 72
Livius Andronicus, 74
Livy and the foundation of Rome,
1 7 ; and political equality, 30 ; as
historian, 150, 151 ; freedom ac-
corded to, 232 ; and Tacitus com-
pared, 289
Loans, 131
Local government in Roman provinces,
6t
Logos, the Divine, 300
Lombards, 213, 217
London (Londinium), 260, 282
London, modern, Roman architecture
in, 251
Longinus, 94
Lorch, 264
Lucan, Latinity of, 9 ; and Spain,
220, 290 ; and republicanism, 242,
273 ; the Pharsalia, 288
Lucca, conference at, 119
Lucceius, 145
Lucian, 290
Lucilius, 237
Lucius, 228
Lucretia, 33
Lucretius and Epicurean philosophy,
139; quoted, 140, 141; as poet,
141, 142, 243; a free poet, 232;
Vergil's use of, 236
Lucrine Lake, 186
Lucullus, 153
Lucullus, gardens of, 255
341
INDEX
Ludians, 307
Lugdunensis, 210
Lugdunum (Lyons), 210, 211, 262,
282
Lupercalia, 125
Lusitania, 221
Lutetia, 211
Luxury, 72, 134, 136
Lycaonia, 193
Lycia, 194
Lyons. See Lugdunum
Lytton, Lord, 279
MAAS, the, 263
Macedonia, 56, 59, 61, 193, 202,
312
Macedonian War, Second, 54
Macedonian War, Third, 65
Macrobius, 133
Maecenas, Octavian's agent at Rome,
129, 165; his rank, 181 ; a poet,
232 ; and literary patronage, 233 ;
and Vergil, 234; and Horace, 237,
239
Magistracy, the, 41, 72; magistracies,
278
Magistrates, 30, 32, 62, 179, 181,
190, 311
Magnesia, 56
Mainz, 216, 219, 263
Maison Carree, 251
Mamurra, 135
Manes, 37
Manilius (tribune), 109
Maniples, battle formation, 29, 97;
number of men, 98
Mantua, Vergil and, 233, 234
Marble, 188
Marbod, King, 217, 219
Marcellus, nephew of Augustus, 1 66 ;
probable successor to Augustus,
175 ; married to Julia, 227 ; death,
228 ; in Vergil, 235
Marcellus opposed to Caesar, 118, 120
Marcellus, Theatre of, 251, 293
Marcomanni, 217
Marcomannia, 309
Marcus, 164
Marius, Gaius, and reform, 90 ; chosen
342
as officer against Jugurtha, 93 ;
elected consul, 93 ; commands the
army in Africa, 93 ; re-elected
consul, 94 ; chief magistrate of the
state, 94 ; defeats the Teutons and
Cimbri, 94 ; and the land, 95 ;
and the senate, 95 ; and a pro-
fessional army, 96 ; massacre by,
and death, 104 ; Caesar and, 109
Marius the younger, 105
Mark Antony. See Antony
Marriage, 80; marriage laws, 226
Mars, 36
Mars, priests of. See Salii
Mars the Avenger, 198; Temple of,
252
Mars' woodpeckers, 38
Marsians, 13, 28
Martial, 220, 278, 289
Martyrdoms of Christians, 301
Masinissa, 57, 208
Mater Matuta, shrine of, 152, 250
Materialism and religion, 139
Mau, Prof., 296
Mauretania, 194, 208, 269
Mausoleum, friezes of the, 246
Maxentius, 302
Maximin the Thracian, 179, 306
Media Atropatene, 199
Medicine, 290
Mediomatrici, the, 212
Mediterranean fleet, 186
Mediterranean, Roman command of
the, 56
Mediterranean worship, prehistoric, 38
Melville, G. J. W., 279
Memmius, 92
Menander, 76
Mercury, 39
Merida, 221
Mesopotamia, 107, 267
Messalina, 138, 224, 255
Messalla, M. Valerius, 233, 240
Messengers, imperial, 196
Messiah, the, 269
"Messianic Eclogue," Vergil's, 160
Messina, 47, 209
Metaphysics, 300
Metaurus, River, 52
INDEX
Metellus family, 75
Metellus, Q., 92, 95, 153
Metellus, Q. Cascilius, 226
Metz, 212
Meyer, Dr. Edouard, 171
Michael Angelo, 244, 251
Milan, Edict of, 302, 313
Militarism, 302
Military despotism, 183
Military service under Gaius Gracchus,
88; under the Republic, 96-97;
Roman citizens and, 184; Italians
and, 196; Jews exempt, 268; bar-
barians and, 311
Milo, 119
Milvian Bridge, 313
Minden, 219
Minerals, 188
Minerva, 39, 79
Mines, 117, 131, 221; in Gaul, 212
Mint at Lyons, 211
Misenum, 186
Mithradates, King of Pontus, 60, 103 ;
massacre by, 6 5 ; duration of war
against, 107: defeated by Pompeius,
109; portrait on coin, 158
Mithradatic War, 103
Mithraism, 201, 299, 308
Modena, 163
Mcesia, 194, 220, 265
Mogontiacum (Mainz), 263
Moles Hadriani, 294
Mommsen, Theodor, on Greece and
Rome, 10 ; on Roman religion, 40 ;
on Roman luxury, 72 ; on Cassar,
112; on the Gauls, 115; on
Augustus, 198
Monaco, monument to Augustus at,
220
Monarchy, Caesar and, 124; hereditary,
175; Augustus and the, 183; growth
of, 277
Money, 313
Monotheism, 207, 303
Morality, 79, 136, 138
Morocco. See Mauretania
Mosaics, 158, 247, 296, 316
Moselle, the, 215
Mucianus, 274
Mule and tent money, 190
Mummius, 155, 247
Munda, 123
Municipal government, 284
Municipal life, 195
Municipal senators, 311
Municipia, 28
Mural painting, 152
Music in schools, 286
Musonius Rufus, 302
Mysia. See Moesia
Mythology, early Roman, 36, 37, 38.
See also Religion
NABATVEA, 194
Nsevius, 75
Naples, 134, 251, 296
Naples, Bay of, 283
Narbonne, 210
Narcissus, 256
Nations, wandering of the, 309
Natural law, 298
Nature-worship, 240
Navy, 48, 186, 187
Neolithic culture, 14
Nepos, 150
Nero, Suetonius on, 162, 256, 306;
unpopular, 177; Petronius satirises,
242 ; the historians and, 254 ; his
Golden House, 256 ; murders, 256 ;
attempts upon his mother's life, 257 ;
story of his death, 257 ; posthumous
honours, 259 ; and the Jews, 268 ;
accession, 272; administration, 272-
273 ; his fall, 273 ; entertainments,
279; tyranny, 287; and Seneca,
291 ; Greek curio-hunting, 293 ;
Christian persecution, 301
Nero, Claudius, 227
Nero, colossus of, 282
Nerva, 179, 275, 276, 289
Nicolaus, 206
Nicomedia, 312
Nicopolis, 202
Nile, the, 204
Ninth Legion, 122, 260
Niobe, 241
Nismes, Temple of, 251
Nobility, 223, 224
343
INDEX
Nola, io5
Nomads, Northern, 197
Noricum, 194, 220
Northern descents on the Mediter-
ranean peoples, 213
Numa, 19
Numantia, 85
Numidia, 92, 208
Numidian cavalry, 52, 98
Nymphs, 37
OCEAN, the, 210, 213, 217
Octavia, 126, 129, 138, 175, 224,
228, 235
Octavius, (tribune), 87
Octavius, Octavian. See Augustus
Odenathus, 307
Odoacer, 314
Officialism. See Bureaucracy
Oil, free, 308
Olympia, 201
Olympian mythology, 207, 240
Omens, 32, 139
Opimius, L., 92
Ops Consiva, 37, 38
Oratory, 144, 147, 148
Orestes (sculpture), 249
Oriens, 312
Ornament in sculpture, 249 ; painted,
297
Orodes, 200
Osiris, 203
Ostia, 12, 27, 255
Otho, 273
Ovid, Latinity of, 9; and Augustus,
169; and the defeat of Parthia,
199; and the gods, 225; an im-
moral writer, 240 ; and the loves of
the gods, 240 ; and nature-worship,
240 ; typical of the civilisation of
his day, 241 ; as a barrister, 241 ;
banishment, 242 ; and the younger
Julia, 242 ; his character, 242
Oysters, Lucrine, 187
PACUVIUS, 76, 138
Pagan-Christian rites, 304
Painting (art), 152, 296
Pais, Prof. Ettore, 42
344
Palatine Hill, 25, 280
Palatine, the, 168
Palazzo dei Conservatori, 294
Pales (god), 36
Palestine, 268
Palmyra, 282, 295, 306, 307, 308
Pamphylia, 193
Pannonia, 193, 220
Pannonian and Illyrian revolt, 184,
217
Pantheon, the, 251, 294
Paphlagonia, 193
Parilia, 36
Paris, 211
Parisii, the, 211
Parthenon frieze, 249
Parthia, 247, 266, 267, 269
Parthians, the, 107, 125, 129, 197-
200, 259
Party system started by the Gracchi,
90
Pasiteles, 155
Passports, 196
" Patavinity," 1 5 1
Patras, 202
Patriarchal system, 25, 26
Patricians, 14, 25, 30, 43, 167, 272,
3M
Patriciate, the, 224
Patriotism, 231
Patronage in literature, 232
Patrons of art, 246, 247
Patronus, or champion, 176, 195
Paul, St., 207, 300 ; appeal to Caesar,
194
Paulinus, Suetonius, 260
Pausanias, 290
"Pax," 1 66
Pax Augusta, 209
Pax Julia (Beja), 221
Pax Romana, 61, 186
Peace under Augustus, 166; Augus-
tan Altar of Peace ("Tellus Group"),
244, 245, 248, 251 ; in the Anto-
nine age, 303 ; and defence, 309
Pelignians, 13
Penates, 37
Pensions for soldiers, 99, 185
People, the, 179
INDEX
Peraea, 194
Pergamum, 55 ; Attalids of, 246
Pericles, 157
Perseus, 56
Persians, 307
Perspective in sculpture, 248
Pertinax, 306
Perugia, 129, 196
Perusine War, 227
Peter, St., 300
Petronius Arbiter, 138, 242, 278,
279
Petronius the legate, 205
Pharisaism, 207
Pharisees, the, 269
Pharsalus, Battle of, 121
Philemon, 76
Philip of Macedon, 50, 54
Philip the Arabian, bust of, 292
Philippi, Battles of, 128
Philistine coast towns, 205
Philistinism in Roman art, 246
Philo Judaeus, 290, 300
Philomela, 241
Philosophy, 139, 279, 286, 290, 299,
300
Phrebe, 230
Phraates, 198, 200
Phrygian corybants, 139
Piacenza, 53
Piazza., 252
Piety, 235
Pilate, Pontius, 206
Pile-dwellings, 14
Pilum, the, 98
Piracy, 59, 106, 108
Pisidia, 193
Piso C. Calpurnius, 80
Piso (consul with Augustus), 1 74
Placidia, Empress, 315
Plague, the, 290, 307
Plantation system of slaves, 7 1
Platsea, 201
Plautius Silvanus, Aulus, 259
Plautus, 76, 77, 138
Plebeians, 14, 25, 30, 43
Plebiscite, the, 174, 179
Plebs, secession of the, 30
Pliny (the elder) and Etruscan art,
20; art critic, 249; as compiler,
290
Pliny (the younger), history in, 195,
278 ; and the emperors, 242 ; con-
dition of Italy, 196; letters, 270;
benevolence, 283 ; and schools,
286 ; and reading, 287 ; and tolera-
tion, 301
Plutarch, 290
Poetry of the Republic, 142 ; of the
Augustan age, 233-243 ; of the
Empire, 288-289
Polemo, 200
Police, 182, 1 86
Political system, reform of, and the
Gracchi, 89
Pollio, Asinius, 160, 168, 232, 234
Polybius, 66, 150
Polycarp, 300
Polygnotus, 296
Pompeian law, 120
Pompeii, 134, 195, 283, 285, 296,
297
Pompeius, Gneius, the Great, and new
provinces, 60 ; and the monarchy,
100 ; supporter of Sulla, 105, 108 ;
ally of Crassus, 108 ; ruler of the
sea, 109; puts down piracy, 109;
defeats Mithradates, 1 09 ; and
Caesar, 114, 119; political in-
capacity, 1 1 8 ; sole consul, 119]
flies before Caesar, 121; murdered
122; and the walls of Jerusalem,
123; his wealth, 132; Vergil and,
288
Pompeius, Sextus, a pirate, 123;
joined by "patriots," 128; defeat
of, 129; his allies against Augustus,
164 ; and Sicily, 209; reconciliation
with Augustus, 226
Pomponius Mela, 290
Pont du Card, 294
Pontifex mctximus, 32. See also Caesar
Pontus, 60, 193, 194, 200, 312
Poor children, Pliny's benefaction for,
283
Pope, the, 315
Population, decline of, 313
Populus Romanus, 174, 177, 179
345
INDEX
Pork, free, 308
Portraiture, Etruscan, 152 ; dread of,
156; under the Republic, 156-
157; under Augustus, 248-250;
under the Empire, 292
Portugal, 221
Portus Julius, 187
Post, 196
Postumus, 306
Pottery, Etruscan, 20; Gallic, 114;
Aretine, 159
" Prsefects, Praetorian," 312
Praeneste, 251, 296
Prcetor peregrinus, 298
Prcetor urbanus, 298
Praetorian guard, the, Augustus and,
172 ; dominates politics, 175 ;
commanded by prefects, 182; its
strength, 182, 185; murder Caligula
and choose Claudius, 271; choose
Nero, 272 ; and the succession,
273> 3°6 ; Vespasian and, 274;
lawyers as prefects, 309
Praetorium, 206
Praetors, 30, 31, 41, 63, 181, 182,
193. 299
Prasina Fractio, 280
Praxiteles, 155
Prefects, of the Fleet, 187 ; of the
City, 182; of the Guard, 182; of
Egypt, 203, 204
President of the state, 134
Press censorship, 163, 289
Prices, Edict of, 310
Priests, colleges of, 32 ; and the law,
41 ; and dining, 133 ; High Priests,
201
Primus, M., 177
" Princeps," 171 ; origin of the princi-
pate, 177; Augustus and the office,
180
"Princes," 124
" Princes of the Youth," 181
Principate, the, 177, 270
Principes, the, 29
Priscus, Helvidius, 300
Prisoners, Roman, as slaves, 197
Probus, 179, 308
Proconsuls, 193
346
Procurators, 194
Proletariat, the, 132. See also Populus
Propertius and the Parthians, 199;
and Maecenas, 233; as poet, 239-
240; loss of patrimony, 243
Property-tax, 189; in Gaul, 190
Propraetors, 194
Provence, 210
Provinces, early, 58; acquisition and
government, 59-65; local autonomy,
61 ; corruption, 64 ; self-supporting
and profitable, 188; taxes, 190; of
the Roman world, 193 ; under the
senate, 193 ; Caesar's provinces,
193; lists of provinces, 193-194;
under Diocletian, 312. See also the
names of provinces as Spain, Gaul,
Africa
Provincia, 59
Prudishness, 80
Ptolemy, alliance with, 47
" Publican and sinner," 64
Publicans (Publicanf), 64, 207
Punic War, First, 48 ; Second, 49 ;
Third, 57
Pupienus, 306
Puteoli, 134
Pyrrhic War, 44
Pyrrhus, 45, 5 1
QILESTORS, 66, 133, 1 88
Quintilian, 220, 290
Quintus Curtius, 33
Quintus Fabius, 51
"RACE-SUICIDE," 138
Raphael, 244
Rates, 196
Raudine Plain, 94
Ravenna, 187, 315
Reading, 287
Realism in Roman art, 157, 248, 249
Red Sea, 204
Regensburg, 264
Religion, early Roman, 32, 35 ; and
Greek mythology, 35, 39; gods, 36
ef seq. ; its nature, 39 ; business
nature of, 40; becomes cosmopolitan
and debased, 79; State religion
INDEX
under the Republic, 133 ; formal
and political, 138; formulae, 139;
materialism and the State religion,
139; superstition and rites, 139;
Augustus and, 201 ; of Gaul, 211;
and art, 248 ; and architecture, 251 ;
Claudius and, 272 ; in schools, 286 ;
and international law, 298; under
the Empire, 299; Christianity, 299
Religions, conflict of, 299
Religious liberty under Trajan, 301
Remi, the, 212
Renaissance, Roman art and the, 244,
251
Republic, the, causes for its end,
100
Republican civilisation, later, 130
Republican constitution, 31
Republicanism, Diocletian and, 3 1 1
Revenue, public, 192
Rex, 125
Rhaetia, 194, 220
Rhaetian limes, 264
Rheims, 210, 212
" Rhetoric," 286
Rhine, the, Caesar's expeditions, 117;
flotillas, 187 ; Augustus crosses,
212, 216; as frontier, 215, 218,
263; Rhine legions, 219, 263;
Limes Trans-Rhenanus, 264; inva-
sions of barbarians, 306, 314
Rhodes, 55, 132, 194, 247
Rich and poor under the Republic,
132
Ricimer the Suevian, 314
Ridgeway, Prof. Wm., 2, 14
Riegl, Alois, 244
Rimini, 196
Roads, Italy, 1 96 ; France, 211; im-
perial, 278
Robigus, 37
Roman Church, ritual, &c. of the,
303 ; a legacy of Rome, 315
Roman conquests, 44 et seq.
Roman Empire under Augustus,
greatness of the, 221
Roman Government, the, and Chris-
tianity, 300-301
Roman history, views of, 3, 4, 5 ;
historians and, 4, 7, 8 ; worthless-
ness of much early history, 23 ;
Greek influence in manufacturing,
24; unreliability of, before 390 B.C.,
24; chronological summary, 317-
324
Roman Peace, the, 61, 186
Roman society, viciousness of, in the
age of conquest, 80
Roman suzerainty, 56; annexations,
56 ; provinces, 58 ; government, 61
Roman Wall, the (Britain), 261
Romans, origin of the, 1 3 ; early
Romans as warriors, 26 ; conquests
by, 28 ; the early Romans, 32 ; the
Roman character, 33, 43 ; virtues,
33 ; accomplishments, 34 ; religion,
35; agriculture, 36; law, 41 ; a
fighting people, 54
" Rome and Augustus," cult of, 201
Rome and Greece, resemblances
between, i ; Greek influence, 6, 7,
1 1 . See also Art, Literature
Rome, and the making of Europe, 5 ;
as a city-state, 6 ; its greatness, 10 ;
origin of, 16 ; under the Etruscans,
17; Etruscan princes expelled, 23 ;
and the Latin plain, 12 ; and the
control of the Mediterranean, 1 3 ;
the Seven Kings of, 19; legends and
early traditions, 1 7 ; the earliest city,
25 ; political equality, 30 ; constitu-
tion, 30 ; the imperial city, 65 ;
wealth, 65 ; taxation, 66 ; finance,
66 ; the populace, 68 ; corn-supply,
69; slavery, 70; equality, 71 ; luxury
72 ; civilisation, 72 ; Greek influence,
73> 74) 81 j causes of degeneracy,
80; individual domination, 83; end
of the Republic, 1 1 8 ; and Caesar,
123; wealth and social conditions
under the Republic, 132; unhealthy,
135 ; social life, 136 ; streets, 152 ;
improvements under Augustus, 167;
magistracy, 182; city prefect, 182;
reform of, by Augustus, 223 ; re-
generation of Roman society, 225,
231 ; patriotism, 231 ; Horace and,
239; and art, 243; rebuilding, 244,
347
INDEX
248 ; architecture, 250 ; the weak-
ness of the Empire, 271; riches
and loss of power, 278; life of the
city described by satirists, 278;
imperial Rome, 278; amusements,
279 ; advanced civilisation, 280 ; its
splendours, 280; buildings and
peoples, 282 ; as a place of abode,
296 ; the Eternal City, 304 ;
Aurelian Wall, 307
Romulus and Remus, 17
Romulus, hut of, 153
Roofing, 250
Roumania (Dacia), 265
Roxolani, 307
Rubicon, the, 120
Russia, 197, 213,
SAALBURG, 264
Saale, the, 216
Sabines, 13
Sacred Mount, 30
Sacred Way, 282
Sacrifices, human, 40, 2 1 1
Sadducees, 269
Saguntum, 49
St. Angelo, Castle of, 294
St. Bernard Pass, 220
Saints, Christian, 304
Salamis, 201
Salaries of officials, 190
Salii, 34, 39
Salinator, M. Livius, 74
Sallust, 150
Salt, free, 308
Saltus, Teutoburgiensis, 218
Salvage brigade, 131
Samaria, 205
Samnite Wars, 13, 28, 44; rebellion,
i°5
Sanhedrin, 207
Saracens, 307
Saragossa, 221
Sarcophagi, 247
Sardinia, 48, 53, 59, 6 1, 193
Sarmatia, province, 309 ; Sarmatian
cavalry, 266 ; captive Sarmatians,
3°7
Sarmatians, the, and Ovid, 243
348
Sarmizegethusa, 266
Satires, 237
Saturn, 38; Temple of, 251
Saturninus, 95
Saxons, 213, 309
Scaevola, 33, 84
Scapula, Ostorius, 260
Scaurus, 91, 92, 94
Sceptre of ivory, the, 2 2
Schoolmasters, 286
Schools. See Education
Scipio Africanus, 52, 53, 58
Scipios, the, 76, 83, 123
Scopas, 155, 250
Scotland, 261
Scribonia, 226, 227
Sculpture of the Republic, 155-157;
revival of, 200 ; the Greeks and
Roman sculpture, 245 ; copies and
imitations, 291; busts, 292; bas-
reliefs, 292 ; narrative on columns,
292
Sea-power, the Romans and, 187
Sebaste (Samaria), 205
Secession of the Plebs, the, 30
Secular games, 238
Sejanus, 271
Semitic question, the, 268
Sena, victory of, 75
Senate, the, beginnings, 25 ; wisdom
of, 28; its constitution, 31; and
Pyrrhus, 46 ; aristocracy and govern-
ment, 72 ; weakness under late Re-
public, 82 ; the Gracchi and, 86,
89, 90 ; and the Jugurthan War,
91 ; and Marius, 95 ; under Augus-
tus, 167, 169, 175-179, 224;
position and powers under the
Empire, 179; military affairs, 184;
under Vespasian, 274 ; under Domi
tian and later emperors, 275; sup-
planted by Diocletian, 312
Senators forbidden foreign commerce,
67, 132; as landowners, 67, 132;
flee from Cassar, 121; tax farmers,
132 ; hereditary, 132, 134
Seneca the younger and Nero, 272,
290, 291 ; ethics of, 303
Senecas, the, Spaniards, 220, 290
INDEX
Senones, the, 212
Sens, 212
Serapis, 139
Sergi, G., on the Mediterranean race,
2
Sertorius, 105, 107
Sestertius, 34
Severi, the, 311
Severus, Alexander, 306, 311
Severus, Septimius, 306
Seviri, Augustales, 196
Shakespeare and Caesar, 112
Shapur, the Persian King, 306
Sheep, 36, 70
Shepherds, 71
Ships, 131
Shophets, 49
Shows, public, 137
Sicily, Pyrrhus and, 46 ; the Romans
and, 47, 51, 52; acquisition of, 59,
60, 61; corn-supply of, 190; a
province, 193; colonies in, 195 ; its
history, 208—209
Sidon, 247
Sienckiewicz, Henryk, 279
Siesta, the, 136
Silanus, 94
Silius, 255
Silius Italicus, 287, 288
Silures, the, 260
Silver coinage, 34, 154
Sirmio, 143, 296
Slavery of early Rome, 70 ; and
immorality, 79 ; Roman society and,
279
Slaves, Sardinian, 53 ; risings among,
1 06; Gallic conquest and, 117;
training and use of, 131; under
Augustus, 181 ; body-guard, 182,
184; and the fleet, 187; tax on
sales, 190; Greek slaves and art,
247
Slavs, 214
Social conditions under the Republic,
132
Social laws, 226
Social war, 102
Society under the Republic, 132 ;
regeneration of, by Augustus, 225;
under the Empire, 279; grades of,
284
Soldiers. See Army
Soldiers, tribune of the, 133
Solon, 19
Solon's code, 42
Soudan, the, 204, 205
Spain, Hamilcar Barca and, 49 ;
Roman army in, 51; Scipio re-
conquers, 5 2 ; ceded by Carthage,
53 ; a province, 59 ; incessant
warfare, 61 ; defeat of Sertorius,
105, 107 ; Caesar and, 121 ; Augus-
tus and, 169, 172, 193; civilised,
209 ; Augustus and an outbreak in,
210; under Augustus, 220-221;
diocese, 312; the Vandals and,
Spalato, 316
Spanish army, revolt of the, against
Nero, 258
Sparta,. 1 94, 201
Spartacus the gladiator, 106
Statius, 288
Statues, 243, 291 ; portraits, 156
Stephanus, 156, 249
Sternness, early Roman, 33
"Stipendiary " states, 60
Stirlingshire, 262
Stoic republicanism, 123, 275
Stoicism, 139, 207, 231, 300, 302
Strabo, 195, 202, 290
Strong, Mrs. A., and Roman art, 157,
244, 292, 294
"Structor," 137
Strzygowski, Josef, 249
Suabia, 216
Succession, imperial, 229, 254
Suetonius and the early Empire, 4 ; on
Caesar, 1 1 3 ; as historian, 162,275;
and the cowardice of Augustus, 182;
quoted on military science, 184; on
the tastes of Augustus, 252 ; on
Nero, 256, 259; studious, 287;
freedom allowed to, 289
Suevi, the, 215, 307, 309
Sulla, L. Cornelius, makes Cisalpine
Gaul a province, 59 : officer to
Marius, 93 ; succeeds Marius, 101 ;
349
INDEX
his character, i o i ; master of Rome,
103, 105 ; and the Mithradatic
War, 1 04 ; returns to Rome and
defeats the Samnites, 105 ; death,
105; and the columns of the Temple
of Olympian Zeus, 153; failure of,
223
Sulla, Faustus, 123
Sulpicius, Rufus, 1 03
Sumptuary laws, 226
Sungod, the, 295, 306
Surrentum, 251
Swabians, 213
Switzerland, 220
Sword, the Roman, 98
Sygambri, 216
Syracuse, 209
Syria, 60, 169, 200, 267, 273
Syrian War, 65
TABULARIUM, the, 153
Tacitus and the imperial regime, 4,11,
242, 273 ; and Augustus, 162, 163,
187; and the Senate, 179; the
Gertnania, 214; and Livia, 228;
and historians, 253; and Britain,
260; the satire of, 275; the "silver
Latin" of, 287 ; and the history of
his own times, 288 ; as prose writer
and historian, 289, 290
Tacitus, Claudius (Emperor), 308
Tanagra, 201
Tarentum, 45
Tarquin, 24
Tarquins, the, 19
Tarraco, 221
Tarraconensis, 221
Tarshish, 49
Tartars, 214, 309
Tax -farming, 132, 191
Tax-gatherers, 191
Taxes (stipendium) from provincial terri-
tories, 64 ; freedom from (tributum),
1 88, 189; in kind, 190; indirect,
196; under the Empire, 270, 276 ;
collection of, 273 ; increase of, 31 1 ;
exemption of certain classes, 311;
Constantine's burden of, 313
Teachers, 286
350
" Tellus Group," the, 244, 250
Temple, the, Jerusalem, 268
Temples, 67, 152, 166, 168, 196, 243,
250, 251, 280, 282, 294
Temples to Augustus, 201
Tenth Legion, the, 123, 150, 269
Terence, 76, 77, 138
Terentia, 138
Terentius Lucanus, senator, 76
Terminus, 37
Terra-cotta ornaments, Etruscan, 21,
22
" Terramare " civilisation, 14
Tertullian, 316
Tetricus, 308
Teutonic and Latin races, contrast
between, 213, 214. See also
Germany
Teutons, the, invasion by, 93 ; de-
feated by Marius, 94
Thamugadi, 283
Thapsus, 123
Theatre of Marcellus, 2 5 1
Theatres, 75
Theatrical performances, 137
Thebes, 202
Theocritus, 144, 233
Theodosius, 313
Thespise, 201
Thessalonica, 202
Third Legion, 283
Thrace, 194, 197, 312
Thrasea, Pstus, 273, 300
Thurii, 106
Thusnelda, 219
Tiber, the River, 1 2 ; and navigation,
17, 187 ; offerings to the, 40
Tiberius, Suetonius on, 162, 306; in
the triumph of Augustus, 166;
suppresses the comitia, 174 ;
nominated to succeed Augustus,
175, 229; as general, 184; over-
lord in Asia, 195; and Germany
216, 263; his mother Livia, 227
banishment, 228; rivals, 228
triumphs, 239 ; character, 253
and enlargement of the Empire
2 59 > government, 271 ; retirement
271 ; and "delation," 272 ; junior
INDEX
colleague to Augustus, 276 ; tyranny,
271,287; classic tendencies of his
reign, 293
Tibullus, 233, 239-240, 243
Tibur, 251
Ticino, 51
Tigellinus, 272, 273
Tigris, the, 267
Timgad, 283
Tiridates, 198
Tithes, 6 1, 191
Titus, 268, 274, 277
Titus, arch of, 269, 282, 293; baths
of, 293
Tivoli, 296
Toga, the, 21, 230, 261
Tomi, 242
Torcello, mosaics of, 316
Trade and the rise of Rome, 17; the
sea and, 1 96 ; fluctuation forbidden,
310
Trajan a Spaniard, 220 ; continues the
Rhaetian limes, 264 ; and the Dacian
Wars, 265, 266; and the Eastern
provinces, 267; campaigns in person,
270; industrious, 270; soldierly
qualities, 271, 275; becomes Em-
peror, 275; and the senate, 275;
Rome under, 279 ; Timgad founded
by, 283 ; and Pliny, 287 ; freedom
of letters under, 289 ; art under,
2 93 > government as shown in his
correspondence with Pliny, 301
Trajan's column, 245, 248, 249, 266,
293
Trasimene, Lake, 51
Treason, 272
Trebia, 51
"Treks," 214
Treveri, the, 215
Treverorum, Augusta. See Trier
Triballia, 194
Tribes, 30
Tribunes, the, 30, 31, 90, 125, 181
Tribute, 191, 260; on Gaul, 212
" Tricliniarch," 137
Tridentum (Trent), 220
Trier, 210, 215, 263, 282
Triumph, the, 183
Triumphal arch, the, 154
Triumphal Road, 280
Trumpets, 36
Tullius, Servius, 19
Tullus Hostilius, 16
Tunisian coast islands, 208
Turin, 196, 220
Tusculum, 134
Twelve Tables, the, 24, 42, 297, 299
Tyranny, 287, 288
Tyrol, Austrian, 197
UBII, the, 215
Umbrians, 13, 28
University professors, 286
Usury, laws against, 103
Utica, 123
VALERIAN, 306
Valerius, 33
Valerius Asiaticus, 255
Vandals, 213, 307, 309, 314
Varius, 232, 233
Varro, 51, 138
Varus, Quintilius, defeat of, 184, 217,
218, 230; legate of Syria, 206
Vases, 159
Vault, the, 153
Vehicles, 196
Velleius, 217, 218
Venatio, 279
Venus and Rome, Temple of, 282
Venus, Augustus descended from, 224 ;
temple to, 166
Venus Genetrix, by Arcesilaus, 156,
249
Venus, Medici, 156
Venus, Paphian, 39
Ver Sacrum, 40
Vercingetorix, 1 1 6
Vergil, Latinity of, 9 ; " Messianic
Eclogue," 1 60; and the Portus
Julius, 187 ; and the Parthians, 199 ;
and Augustus, 225, 234; and the
Augustan age, 231, 232; and cen-
sorship, 233; and Atticus, 233;
birth and education, 233; and
Maecenas, 234; Bucolics, 233;
Georgics, 234; sEneid, 235-236;
351
INDEX
and Rome, 235-236 ; loss of
patrimony, 236, 243; position, 288 ;
and epic poetry, 288
Verres, 209
Verulamium, 260
Vespasian and press censorship, 163;
in Britain, 259; and Germany,
264; and Mo2sia, 265; subdues
Palestine, 268; becomes Caesar,
274 ; origin, 274 ; government, 274 ;
Rome under, 279; and Pliny the
elder, 287 ; art under, 293
Vesta, 38 ; Temple of, 152
Vestals, state, 38
Vetera Castra (Xanten), 216, 219,
263
Via Appia. See Appian Way
Via Claudia, 263
Vicars, 312
Vice, 133, 138
Villa Albani, 293
" Villanova " period, 1 4
Villas, 251, 295
Viminacium, 266
Vindex, 257, 262
Vipsania, 227
Virginia, 33
Viriathus, 84
Virtue, Roman, 33, 80
Visigoths, 314
Vitellius, 262, 273, 289
Vitruvius, 290
Voluptas, 139
Vopiscus, 307
WALES, 260
Walls, Roman, 261, 262
War and culture, 73
Warfare, annals of, in history, 306
Watchmen, 186
Wax images, 156, 248
Wealth under the Republic, 1 3 1
Weser, the, 216, 219
Wickhoff, Franz, and Roman art, 157,
244, 293
Wiesbaden (Aquae Mattiacae), 264
Wine, 136
Wolf, the, as totem, 1 9 ; the mother
wolf, 38
Women, influence of, 223; wickedness
of, under the Empire, 254
World-state, the, 278, 308
Worth, 264
XANTEN. See Vetera Castra
YORK, 261
S, 207
Zama, 53
Zealots, the, 268
Zela, 123
Zeno the Stoic, 300
Zenobia, Queen, 306, 307, 308
Zeus, Olympian, Temple of, 153
Zeuxis, 296
Zion, Temple of Jupiter on, 269
Zuyder Zee canal, 216
PRINTED BY
BALLANTYNE & COMPANY LTD
AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN
LONDON
\
DG
77
S8
Stobart, John Clarke
The grandeur that was Rome.
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY